Keeping 3 corn snakes housed together?
Boy, well this feels really depressing... I've just come from an animal centre that trains apprentices and they had a large tank for three corn snakes. They had one half log hide, and one proper hide which is identical to the two I keep in my snake's enclosure.
All three of the corn snakes were curled into the one secure hide and I almost cried thinking about how stressed out they must have been. I asked them if they are all kept in one enclosure and said that they could cannibalise each other from stress, but she told me they were friends. My parents told me I must have been misinformed about the snakes from reading incorrect knowledge from unreliable sources online.
Surely there shouldn't be three cornsnakes with only 1 proper hide kept together in an enclosure though? I don't really know what to do, I feel powerless as it seems like everyone disagreed with me.
Can somebody please just tell me if this is bad husbandry? It feels like it is and I'm so upset thinking about them all sat on top of each other and everybody saying that I was misinformed. Maybe I am anthropomorphising them but from everything I've read - even on the official corn snake website - it feels like this is bad practice and I should do something about it.
Re: Keeping 3 corn snakes housed together?
I do not personally cohab, but some people do and I have found, for the most part, it is not worth arguing with them about it.
Re: Keeping 3 corn snakes housed together?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
John1982
While that petshop is probably doing it all wrong and for the wrong reasons, on multiple occasions I've found more than one corn snake peacefully occupying the same retreat. For the most part, cohabing is a balance of risk and reward that any interested keeper must assess. Just about any snake can either kill or be killed by any other snake if they're thrown together. Most, except bonafide ophiophagous species, don't just slither around killing other serpents.
The thing is, this wasn't actually a pet shop - it was an animal apprenticeship and trainee centre, and these snakes had been kept like that for some time. I imagine that they would continue to be kept like that.
I only worried that the snakes would be stressed out all packed in one hide together, For the record, I didn't actually believe it likely that the snakes would cannibalise each other, rather I mentioned it to them more as a deterrent, since I'd read that it was wrong to keep them all in the same tank without adequate hides.
Thank you though, I appreciate what you're saying. It's very likely that I overreacted.
