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Posted by patricia sherman on September 18, 2002 at 13:22:29:
In Reply to: Re: Feeding schedule & size posted by Raven01 on September 17, 2002 at 13:30:08:
::Actually, your snake is a very young adult, maybe a three-yr-old.
:I've emailed the couple I bought him from and asked if they could let me know the gender and age since I forgot to ask while I was at the show.
You may have to get it probed, they may not have known the gender themselves.
:I'm glad to know that he is probably younger than I was guessing.
Well, even if he's been underfed all his life, I very much doubt that he'd be over 4-yrs. As I said before, I'd guess him to probably be a 3-yr-old. They hatch at about 11"-to-14" (with up to 16" being known), and grow to about 32" by the age of 12-months. At age two the average length is 41". After that, growth is at about 8"-to-12" per year for two or three years, then slows greatly to about 1"-to-2" per year for the rest of their lives.
:I must've misread on the size because I thought the average was 4-5 feet on the rat snakes.
Baird's rat snake, Elaphe bairdi, is probably the smallest of the North American rat snakes, rarely attaining length greater than 5-ft (1.54 metres). Corns will often top out at about 5-ft+, but most rats tend to be longer and more slender than corns. The maximum recorded length for E. o. obsoleta, is 101" (2.59 metres).
:Bigger is not a problem at all though. :) With 4 boas ranging in the 6-7 foot range and 5 more boas that will reach those lengths as adults, I'm definately not intimidated by big snakes. lol
Even at that length, the obsoletas aren't at all intimidating. They haven't anywhere near the muscle mass or constricting power of the boids.
:I must admit, the slenderness is one of the many attractive features to me about the corns and rats. And they really do move a lot faster. It keeps me on my toes! lol
Indeed it does. I was removing a couple of my juvenile females from a shared cage the other day. I took my eyes off the cage for barely a second while placing one into a container, and the other vanished! It only took me a couple of minutes to find her, because she hadn't gone very far, but I was mightily impressed by how quickly and unnoticeably she did it.
: The weanling mouse I fed him was one from rodentpro.com (weanling for them is a small mouse anywhere else) ... will most likely feed him 2 mice every 7-10 days or so. The weanling he ate left a nice bulge that was just visible the next evening.
Sounds about right. But these skinny critters can surely surprise you by the size of what they can consume. I have a female corn that is only 33" long and weighs only 185 grams, yet she's well able to take adult mice, having taken her first one when she was several inches shorter and a fair bit lighter than she is now.
::I was recently looking for "white-oaks" rat snakes, and I was surprised at how difficult it was to find them. ...
:I've not seen the White Oaks for sale at the local shows at all, even the grey rats are pretty rare. In my area (central Virginia), it seems that the more brightly colored colubrids are what is 'in'.
Yes, I think colour sells. The creamsicles and bloodred corns are very much in demand, and much easier to obtain.
:I imagine that being as far north as you are, the brumation factor is quite a plus.
The ambient temp in my house during the winter, is about 68-70'F. In the critter-room, it is very even, at about 75'-76'F. I have a cold-room under the stairs, of which the back wall is one of the foundation walls of the house. In winter, the temp in there is a very cool 38-44'F, and my snakes do wonderfully with it. They emerge from brumation with virtually zero weight loss. In midsummer, this same cold room, never gets above 50'F.
In my household, I doubt they will ever go into brumation - I'm too cold natured and rarely let the ambient temps in the house get below 70-75 F. :)
If you intend to breed your snakes, you may want to set up a cold place for them.
I wish you well,
Tricia
