Housing Retics together?

I have a few retics, and I must say, that when the door of their enclosure opens, they come flying out. No way would I ever place two in one cage. ( other than breeding, of course.. )

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Originally Posted by wilomn

Have YOU ever seen a 300lb retic? Have YOU ever kept two or more snakes together which would give YOU some first hand experience in determining whose puke or poop was whose? Have YOU ever had one snake get sick, while keeping other snakes in the same rack or room, but no others?

Or is this all regurgitation in action?



Whenever you feel you're up to it. There's no rules set in stone for this. Just because most people say you can't, doesn't make it so. How many have tried it themselves?

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Tell us your personal opinions on this topic! What are your experiences? I know I have 0 experience seeing as I have one small ball python, but whenever a post comes up regarding snake cohabilitation you always tell them all this about not having real experiences, and regurgitating all the opinions other people came up with. Or does it just bother you that people are repeating other's info? Help the conversation move along... :irkd:

I do rescind my statement on their weight. 300lbs is a little hefty for a Retic, but it's definitely not unusual if they reach 150-200lbs easily, especially a female.

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Originally Posted by xFenrir

I do rescind my statement on their weight. 300lbs is a little hefty for a Retic, but it's definitely not unusual if they reach 150-200lbs easily, especially a female.

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Even 150-200lbs is far off and not as common as you may think... Most weights are drastically exaggerated for who epeen value. Truth is, that 200lb snake, probably weighs closer to 120 in all reality..

That being said, how many people who have responded to this thread actually keep retics, let alone adult retics? Just saying, keeping a hatchling-6-7 foot retic doesn't take much more than any other snake. As someone who currently owns 4 adult retics, and works with many others I can say the following OP:

Your proposed enclosure is large enough for 2 juvie retics, or an adult male. An adult female will end up needing at least an 8x3 enclosure, that's at adult size, 17-18+. I keep my smaller girls (12'-13') in 6ft cages without problems but they are nowhere near fully grown yet, and are only about 2 years of age each.

The other thing that concerns me is the idea that you want them to breed. Retic breeding isn't like breeding garter snakes, you're going to end up with problems doing it how you propose, on top of the fact you need to be flexible with your temperatures, careful feeding snakes, it's just a recipe for disaster for a newer keeper.

Fact is- you can easily keep 2 retics in the same enclosure, if you know what you are doing, and know the individual snakes very well. If you don't have experience with retics, experience with the snakes, ability to separate them when needed, don't do it. It's not a beginners move to make, and yes, in this sense you are a beginner.

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Originally Posted by LAXGOALIE

I am planning on making a enclosure that will go under my bed and will be 6 feet long, 4 feet wide and 2 feet high. I was wanting to know if I could put two retics together and they would permanently live together, perferbly male and female because I want to breed.

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Well, well Mr. OP, you have inadvertantly opened up quite the can of worms.

I don't keep retics, never have, never will. However, I have kept and do keep more species than I can easily count and have this bit of advice for you:

There are many species of snake that do just fine when properly cohabitated. More importantly, There are many species of snake that will not breed in captivity unless cohabitated year round. That's a fact, and any chonie smear stain that wishes to debate that FACT with me can meet in the woodshed where I will deal with your misconceptions and lack of pertinent experience in a more direct manner.

So my advice is pretty darn simple - any blithering fool who baldly states that NO species of snake can EVER be housed together is a tool that you should not heed a shred of advice from. Sadly, some people feel that their experience with a couple of species qualifies them to make stupid and false statements about ALL snakes.

Take your advice from someone who has been into retics a long time, and did not absorb their knowledge from a forum caresheet cobbled together by some PS3 playing Generation Z lay about who stayed up all night in his parents basement penning his brilliant manifesto on snake husbandry.

Yes Forum Sheeple, the principles against cohabitating snakes you repeatedly and predictably spout all have the roots in the culture of BS that seems to have it's roots in self ordained experts deciding that their two or three years of experience with a narrow band of species should apply to everything snakey. It concerns me that some of you think that two long term captive snakes, that have been properly quarantined and housed can all of a sudden get sick. Again, the knowledge you all are absorbing from the intrawebs has brainwashed you into believing things can't be done that can and that things magically happen that really don't.

There are people who have been into retics a long time and who can give you real advice born from real experience. Not ersatz advice born from reading a laughable caresheet written by someone who researched the data from Google searches.

Here's something for you all to chew on while you think about how you are going to try to back hand me for this post:

5 years ago there was a person (who I will not name) who used to post on this and many other forums. This dude was a moderator on a couple of other sites and penned quite a few care sheets. From the safety of anonymity of his musty bedroom he used to dispense God knows how many advice posts which many in the online community eagerly took as gospel. Heck, I still see some forum zombies unknowingly quote his garbage from time to time these days.

Long story short - his advice was specious at best, but he wrote his posts in such a direct and aggressive manner that people ASSumed that he knew his left nut from his right.

I was at an expo where I was doing a speaking thing on dispholidines. After the presentation he came up and introduced himself to me.

I can count all of the times in my life when I have actually been tongue tied and this was one of them. The internet "expert" standing in front of me was a gangly weed of a teenager, probably no more than 18 years old, who I would not have trusted to pick dog crap up off of my lawn. The guy who had moderated another forum and "spoke" with so much "authority" and dispensed so much "advice" was nothing more than some nerdy, World of Warcraft playing social outcast who had not only carved an alternate fantasy world in online adventure games, but apparently on the snake forums themselves.

I don't know what happened to him, but like most people in this hobby, he quietly faded away one day. Maybe he met a girl who liked video games, fast food and Dungeons and Dragons as much as him, maybe his parents forced him to go away to community college, or maybe he realized that being an online snake expert wasn't as rewarding as he once thought. His involvement in the hobby lives today, as I still see many of the false advice he so readily dished out vomited up all over the forums.

I could go on and tell you stories of people who I sold cribos to who in a couple of months, despite admitting to me that they had never worked with drys before, were spouting off cribo care tips all over the web (and in one case one wrote a damn caresheet)..........but you all get the picture - right?

Remember, many of the self proclaimed experts on the forums are experts only in using the Google search function.

Thanks guys. Like I said earlier I got a Boaphile rack so I'll foccus on ball breeding. You guys don't have to argue any more haha.

Its gonna keep going these threads on housing snakes together tend.to go on a long time :/

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