Thanks for the additional info! :)

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Posted by Raven01 on September 19, 2002 at 11:59:47:

In Reply to: Re: Feeding schedule & size posted by patricia sherman on September 18, 2002 at 13:22:29:

:You may have to get it probed, they may not have known the gender themselves.

I have a set of probes but wanted to know on the rat mostly out of curiousity. I don't really plan to get a mate. I just fell in love on sight. :)

: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.

: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).

Good info to know. Thank you. From what I was told, and I trust this couple, he was fed weekly so I have a younger animal. I plan on doing a bit more research on this particular type of rat snake in the not too far future spare time provided (I hope anyway). Most of what I've read prior to getting him was on the net and was basically generalized information.

: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.

I can completely relate to this. I house my two hatchling corns together and it's always an adventure to get them both in the container without one escaping.

: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've been amazed with the hatchling corns feeding on pinks. I guess I'll try a bit larger prey item the next time I feed him.

:If you intend to breed your snakes, you may want to set up a cold place for them.

I doubt I'll ever breed the corns or the grey rat (would have to find a mate for the grey rat if I ever do). I basically got all three because I've been looking into the colubrids for a while and these were the first three to make me think 'I *really* want that one - sold!'. :)

Thank you for all the helpful advice and info. Much appreciated.

Raven

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