Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Whats the best way to attract rat snakes(or any kind of snake) to your land.and for them to live on your land.

In order to create some sort of preserve you first need to have a sizeable piece of land in the area your animal lives in. For instance, I live on a 20 acre hobby farm that we call Afton Farm. It's small, but enough to attract a good number of inhabitants. A couple days ago I made a post about amphibian habitat and conservation (link below).

One problem is that different snakes have differing requirements, so the more variable your land is the better. In the case of ratsnakes you would want a combination of fields and woods. Ratsnakes eat a lot of rodents, but also birds/eggs and some little stuff, like frogs. Make habitat for their food and they will come. They also need shelter, so leave your cuttings to make brush piles, leave some woods, and let the rodents make burrows in your fields. We manage four ponds on our property too. As a matter of fact the property is perfect for a wide variety of birds, including ground nesting and wetland birds...

We don't have any ratsnakes on our property in n. Michigan, because we're not in their range, but we do have plenty of milksnakes. Eastern milksnakes feed on smaller snakes when young and we have tons of those. They feed on nestling rodents when older and the variety of habitat and fields insures plenty of kinds of rodents. Having lots of variety requires maintenance, however. To keep forest out of the fields means we have to mow once every couple years, or so. To keep some of the ponds and wetlands open we need to cut brush periodically.

If you'd like to know more about Afton Farm check our gallery at Kingsnake (user = ratsnakehaven)....or join our Yahoo Group...(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ratsnakehaven/)

We can only keep species alive in the wild by maintaining proper habitat for them in the wild.

TC
Amphibian conservation

For some reason the link didn't work. Maybe Kingsnake is blocking the site. I'll attach a link to the recent pictures in my photo gallery, if you want to see just the pictures. To see the whole strand on the unmentionable forum, go to the forum and look for my post on Aug. 22nd. If you don't know which forum I'm talking about then email me for directions. Thanks for looking...

TC
Amphibian conservation photos

Hopefully this link will take you to my photo gallery. If not, I'm outa here

TC
Amphibian conservation photos

Looks like great skeeter habitat too. Hope your trip home went well.

Haha. At times the blood-suckers can be nasty. At least we don't have those pesky little "noseeums".

Our trip home was uneventful which is good. Had a great time. Hope you aren't getting flooded out.

TC

Research their prey and create habitat for them (birds, rodents). If the food is there, the snakes will eventually come.
-----
...and I think to myself, "What a wonderful world."

My grandpa lives on the edge of some steep ravines that are loaded with oak,walnut,rasberries,etc.There is also a creek at the bottom.For years the whole neihborhood dumped trees,leaves,grass clippings over the sides.There are literally thousands of rodents,mice,rats,voles,chipmunks, squirels and birds in the area.
In the years of just mowing his grass Ive accidently killed more snakes than I currently own.lol.
Bullsnakes,black rats,garters,ribbons,and some ringnecks live there.Also some small 4 lined lizards call the rocky bluff there home...Paul
-----
Taste like chicken