Is Thermoregulation needed?

[magick-bears]

As I have been reading past posts I found a breeder claiming that he has never used any kind of basking areas (i.e. heat tape, UTH, Lights). That he has only uniformaly heated his snake room. Unfortunatly I can not find that thread (if I do I will post a link).

Well this statement intriqued me. I have breed corn snakes in the past and have had them in racks using heat tape. I am curantly getting back into breeding corns. I am, however, on a fixed budget so I am starting very slow. I plan to house them in sweater and shoebox systems. Yet I don't want to put out the expense for a large rack when I curantly only have a couple of snakes. Buying UTH devices for sweater boxes is not only expensive is IMHO unsafe. So I emailed the breeder to ask what temperture he mantains his snake room at and any other advice he might have. Unfortunatly, I have not heard back from him. So I decided to post the question here.

Can corn snakes be successfully kept in a snake room that has a stable temputure (day-time 78 to 82 night 73 to 75 can be increased if needed) without the use of any othe heat source.

Thank you,
Jeff Carter

 

[Cheryl Marchek AKA JM]

I've heard of this as well. I'm not sure how much absolute faith you want ot put into it though. Maybe give it a try and see how it goes~

We are neighbors~ I'm a bit north of San Diego in Corona~ last summer I kept several corn snakes all summer with no addtional heat source. They were fine. Fed well and grew steadily. Until October. Then I started getting regurges. I moved those snakes into a heated rack, regurges stoped. I've got a couple clutches incubating right now. Don't plan to put them in a heated rack, just gonna use shoe boxes in a book case like last summer. But I'll be sure to sell off what I'm not keeping before October when they will need supplemental heat.

So~ thats my expierience with it. Good Luck nieghbor!

 

[magick-bears]

Hi Cheryl,

I am always on the look out for local breeders. Thank you for sharing your experiance with this. I am couriouse as to what temp your room averaged over the summer. I am trying to get all the info I can before the snakes actualy get here. We are starting out with an 03' pair from Rick over at Renegade Reptiles in Ramona.

On a side note I really like RA. I have always loved the Miami Phase. Will you be breeding him back to Hathore again this year. I have also desided to raise our own mice. Just seems more economicle. I have actualy been trying to find English Type Mice but am having no luck. I figuare if we are going to raise them they might as well be intersting and atractive Do you have any young adult fancies for sale? Though I am not sure how I would get them. I'm disabled and have to rely on public transportation as I am not allowed to drive.

Thanks,
Jeff

 

[Cheryl Marchek AKA JM]

Hello Jeff,
I may breed Ra to Hathore again this year for a second clutch. She's a serious fatty, and I think she may be able to double. Same with Banshee (The Hypo Okeetee). I held back four of the females from Ra and Hathore's first clutch as well, and I may breed one of those back to Ra in the future.

Room temps here stay pretty high cuz I'm too cheap to turn the central air down. I beleive last summer I kept it set to 80F day time, and the night time drops probably got down to 70 or 75. That only worked during the hottest part of the summer though. October rolled around and night temps got too low.

Yeah, I've got some real pretty fancy mice and rats. I breed for color, it's fun! I have silkies as well as a number of interesting colors. I also am working with a line of longer haired animals. I'm pretty busy this month, but maybe later this summer we can set up to meet and I can drop some off for you, or if you have friends/family that drive up the 15 they could pick up.

Unfortunatly, very busy and gotta run! Tootles,
Cheryl

Good Luck!

 

[Willis Wildlife Enterprises]

I have successfully kept and bred cornsnakes for 9 years with just maintaining the snake room at the proper temps. I live in Florida so it isn't too difficult. During the winter, space heaters keep the room warmer than the rest of the house. The only problem I have is during the summer when the outside temps reach 100 F or more. The room is insulated, but has no air conditioning, so I have to plan ahead, lock up the cats, open the doors to the rest of the house (which does have A/C) and plan on having a higher electric bill for that time period. I will hopefully, in the next year or 2, have a seperate building for the snakes, which will have it's own central heating and air, so maintaining the temp will be much easier. I house my snakes in sweater/shoeboxes of the appropriate size and utilize whatever shelving I've come across (most are on wheels, which makes it easy to move things around if needed).

 

[WebSlave]

As I have been reading past posts I found a breeder claiming that he has never used any kind of basking areas (i.e. heat tape, UTH, Lights). That he has only uniformaly heated his snake room. Unfortunatly I can not find that thread (if I do I will post a link).

That possibly could be me you are talking about.

I heat the entire rooms the animals are in, and have been doing it that way since moving to Florida around 1991. It seems to work well, but honestly the Fall months can be a little problematical on the babies. The fluctuating temperatures are harder on the small snakes because they just don't have the body mass to keep their internal temperatures stable when ambient temperatures may fluctuate 10 to 15 degrees. Consequently, regurgitations do happen. I can look back on the markers I put on their containers and see where whole sections of a rack will have a bunch of the babies who all regurgitated the same meal. Meaning that the temperature the night after feeding them, it probably dipped down around 70 degrees in that room. Or maybe the heater came on and the thermostat didn't shut off at the correct point and the temperature got up to 86 degrees or so. Or maybe they were in a draft from the fan, or the heater itself, which made a spot locality out of their tolerance range temporarily.

Happens every year, but normally it is not fatal to the babies. It does kick their growth back a bit, since even one regurged meal can make a noticeable difference in their growth rate. Also, not only did they lose a meal, but I get real cautious the next couple of meals and feed them smaller than normal pinkies to keep from stressing out the digestive system further. Multiple strings of regurgitations CAN kill a baby corn snake, so that is to be avoided at all costs.

In a perfect situation, yes, a thermocline in each and every cage would be the optimum solution. But in a practical situation, dealing with LOTS of babies, it is just not feasible to do so.