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Old 08-27-2006, 01:13 PM   #1
KINGLIA
Exclamation kingsnake behaviour / help needed

hello im miro a 29 y old girl from stockholm
im new here. i need some help and advice
if there s anybody here that knows about behaviour
of the kalifornia kingsnake i would appreciate your advise.

i have a male and female california kingsnakes desert phase, i bought them last september when they were 2 months old and i think im takin quite good care of them

(let me say first of all im not sure yet the male is the male and the female is the female as they are too small to check the sex, at what age can i do that?)

but the thing is they are very different, the male is really calm and almost
never moves he stays under his stone all the time but the female is crazy, jumps and runs a LOT and in the last period more then ever she is movin all day for many hours tryin to climb the glass of the terrarium fallin all the time and is a very strange behaviour, she s always like that, is that normal? im afraid she s gonna hurt herself falling,she is doin this all day long, im starting to think something might be wrong?
can anybody tell me if this is normal?
i tried puttin brunches but she ignored them, she is like tryin to get out
climbing the glass in height only, really weird, i don t know what to to calm her down..she eats regularly and never had any problems..

can somebody please let me know if i have to worry?
thank you a lot
miro
 
Old 08-27-2006, 02:18 PM   #2
SnakeChic0704
Snakes all have their own personality as far as these things go. I have a pair of grey banded kings, but no cal kings. Most colubrid behavior is pretty similar anyway though.

Are these snakes housed separately? If not, the female might be stressed being with the male, causing her to try to escape. Have you double checked temps, etc? I'd basically try to look for a reason for her to not want to be in her tank. Otherwise, if you can't find any problems, she may just be more active.

As for sexing - it can be done at any age, just with different techniques. For young animals, it's best to "pop" them to determine sex. For older animals with full muscle control, you can't really pop them without hurting them, so you must probe instead. To pop, you put your index finger on their back, just before the cloaca (towards head, not tail). Put your thumb on the underside of the tail, just past the cloaca. Gently push up from the tail to the cloaca, and if it's a male the hemipenis will "pop" out. To probe, you need to get ahold of a set of ball tipped sexing probes. Lube with KY jelly and insert from the cloaca, just off center, and down to the tail. If it bottoms out a few scales in, it's a female. If it goes deeper, it's a male. That said, you shouldn't try either technique until someone demonstrates it for you first. You don't want to hurt your snake!
 
Old 08-27-2006, 02:19 PM   #3
DAND
First off, welcome to the forum Miro.

You can sex kings at any age. For hatchlings you can pop them (provded you know how, if not it is best to have someone who knows how to do so). Being yearlings you could probably have them probed to determine their sex.

Their behavior varies just like people or any other animal. The way yours are acting sounds like normal activities even know the two are acting differently. I wouldn't worry about it especially if they are eating, shedding and eliminating on a regular basis.
 
Old 08-27-2006, 05:40 PM   #4
KINGLIA
hello
THANK YOU so much for answering, i really appreciate!

the thing is last january, they were 6 months old, when i took them to the vet and ask
to know their sex the vet said they are too young to determine and
they could be harmed if done at that time so to wait until they grow more, i didn t know
you can see this even when they are small...anyway i won t do
any kind of attempts to determine sex myself,i ll find someone who
knows how to do this, thank you a lot for the advise anyway.

my snakes are in 2 separate terrariums, so never been together,
i tried to put once the female in the males terrarium and the way he reacted looked to me as an attack, he jumped on here and she run away scared so
i took her out and never attempted puttin them together again,
even if i have plans to breed them one day,so i have no clue how to put them together without them attackin each other (eat in each other? is it possible? they eat other snakes so..??), any advice on how to do that?

as for the behaviour well she is ok, eats regularly,eliminates, sheds in one piece and looks very healthy, still she is ABNORMALLY climbing the glass even after she s been fed, shouldn t she rest after eating ?
it just looked too strange to me as ok i know as small they are jumpy but
it looked strange to me,im not snake expert so she might be just super active,
is just that not she is doin different things or climbin different places, is all the same, she is like rubbing her nose in the glass climbing in height extending her self almost to the roof and then she falls down hurtin herself, that s why i was bit worried...and is like this for days and days...
but ok i guess is just her personality.

well as for temperature i m still not really sure how to deal with, i read for the kind of snake i have temp shuold be bet 75f and 85f, maybe higher as is a desert snake... and im tryin to keep it like that, they have lamps 8 to 10 hours a day but lately i ve taken those away as durin day in my apt was really hot and temp inside terr was rising to 88 ? 89f which is too much? i guess so now they have no lamps and only a corner with the heating pad...
so at the moment im not really regulatin temp but when i check it shows
maybe 84 / 86 (maybe i need a better temperature measurement inside the terr)...im not really sure how to control the temp, how to rise and lower it? is that very important? do you think that might be the problem?
any advise how to control temperature?
im returnin to the lamps now in autumn, but for now they have been a month without...
 
Old 08-27-2006, 10:53 PM   #5
SnakeChic0704
I regulate temps using thermostats. There aren't any other reliable ways either. You want one end of the tank in the mid to upper 70's, and the other end of the tank in the upper 80's. For heat, I just use heat tape. If the tank design requires the heat tape to go inside instead of underneath, I put a piece of plexiglass over the heat tape to prevent direct contact and burns. To maintain the temp on the cool side, you'll need to keep the room itself in the low to mid 70's. If the room temp is lower, you'll need a light or cermic heat emitter also on a thermostat to bring the cool side up.

Also make sure you have a hide on each side. I use either the rock caves or terra cotta saucers (like you put under a pot) for the main hide on the warm side. Hit the side of the saucer with a hammer to make an entrance. For the cool side, I usually use either shoebox lids, or use a water bowl that can be hidden under - the dog water bowls that walmart sells work great. Hopefully you can find something similar in Stockholm. Otherwise just use another saucer or rock cave.
 

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