Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Ive had 22 eggs incubating in a chicken incubator for the past few weeks and 6 just hatched, and the others are coming soon. If anybody has any suggestions of how i should care for them at such a young age it would be greatly appreciated.

I have a pretty young one myself. Well, more of a juv/yearling now but I've had him for a while. I keep him on papertowels, large shallow water dish. A low hide, almost like hiding under a piece of bark, and that's it. I feed him fuzzies now, but I had him on the smallest pinkies I could find and large crickets. He used to go after crickets like crazy when he was smaller. Just one at a time because they are sight hunters and freak out as babies with too many in there moving around. That's just from my expierence anyway.

so far 11 have hatched and 1 died from going up into the circut board of the incubator and got badly burned. But i have 11 in a 20 gallon tank with 2 hide boxes and a repti-thermal pad under one end of the tank with a lizard carpet on the bottom and then about 1 to 2 inches of tree bark substrate. I have a water dish that is like 4 inches in diameter and for some reason i cant keep enough water in it i guess it is just evaporating to quickly cause i never see any snakes in it, what do you think? Anyways i think i should get a bigger one in there. there are 9 more eggs in the incubator that should hatch with the next 2 days. One egg had gone bad like 2 weeks ago. And wow before the snakes were used to the tank they woud vibrate there tails and even snap at me and light and even occasionally each other, but they have calmed down significantly. they always seem to want to stay in the bigger of the 2 hide boxes together because i think it is over the heating pad ( thus more heat) but i read in a book that when you snakes are always in the heat section of your tank then you dont have enough heat in there so they are trying to get as much as they can and keep it, what do you think? do i need to get a light for ontop? and how do you think i should have the whole thing done like the tank setup and all of them so that i can properly take care of these 11 potentially 20 baby snakes? also how does you snake do with handling?

oh yea how do racers kill and eat there prey? do they constict?

They don't constrict. They sort of bite and slam and thrash around and pin with their body. My racers don't do handling. The bite like crazy. I use a hook and tail them like you would a venomous snake. It just seems easier for me and the snake that way. I myself would buy a bunch of plastic shoe boxes and seperate them. I don't like housing snakes together, especially that many competing for food. What are you temps at? Knowing where they are makes it a whole lot easier to know if you need more heat or not.

With just the therm-repti pad thingy under the tank, it stays about 79 degrees in there.