How can a cage be too big???

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Originally Posted by bearhart

So, we've got going off feed and RI as stress symptoms. I think their tendency to "ball" is a good indicator. Are there others?

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And you would be wrong.
To ball up is not a stress reaction that is a defense that the animal uses when its physical well being is threatened. Stress in Ball pythons is any number of things that is caused from the animals physical and/or physiological needs are not being met.

"In medical terms, stress is the disruption of homeostasis through physical or psychological stimuli. Stressful stimuli can be mental, physiological, anatomical or physical reactions." (from wikipedia)


and since I sensed a little scarcasium(sp) in you "Are there others" yea. Heres a few
Enjoy :D

What to look for
Assessing stress and illness in reptiles means looking at the animal itself as well as its immediate environment (enclosure and equipment) and the macroenvironment (the room in which the enclosure resides).

Check the overall appearance of the reptiles:

* Are there any lateral folds, or are the folds normal for the species exaggerated in appearance or are there more of them?
* Has there been a change in color?
* Is the color of the skin dulling, darkening?

Check for changes in feeding habits:

* Has food intake dropped off?
* Food choices changed?
* Are they selecting foods with higher moisture content?
* Eating more?

Look for changes in the appearance, consistency and amount of feces and urates:

* Is there less urates?
* Is it thicker, more viscous?
* Are fecal masses smaller, harder, drier?
* Defecating less often?

Check for any changes in behavior:

* Is the reptile lethargic?
* Spending more time in hiding or in the cooler end of the thermal gradient?
* Spends more time in basking area?
* Prolonged soaking in water bowl?
* More active, especially at odd times?
* Engaging in frequent or prolonged digging, scratching or head-banging behavior?
* Increased or decreased tongue-flicking when handled or enclosure is opened?
* Has the usually tame reptile become aggressive (not associated with breeding season)?*

Check for changes in shedding:

* Has the shed schedule become erratic?
* If the reptile should be shedding in one piece (all snakes, some lizards), is it?
* Are sheds taking much longer than usual to complete?

Check for physical signs of illness an injury:

* Is it gaping (sitting with open mouth) for long periods of time?
* Increased or thickened saliva?
* Paling of the tissues inside the mouth?
* Prolonged eversion of hemipenes or cloacal tissue after defecation?
* Limping?
* Swelling of digit, tail, limb, back, jaw?
* Loss of muscle tone/strength?
* Tremors?
* Shakiness?
* Less climbing or failure to climb?
* Difficulty raising body off ground (for legged species)?
* Difficult or failure to right itself?
* Any lumps, bumps or bruised areas?
* Any scabs?
* Blisters?

If any of these signs occur, the environmental requirements of the species must be checked against the conditions actually occurring in the enclosure and any inadequacies or failures corrected.

If the proper physical environment is well established, the social environment needs to be looked at in enclosures where more than one animal is housed together. It should be noted that aggression and dominance behavior is not always overtly physical - there need not be any actual fighting. Subtle behaviors on the part of the dominant animal may result in a subordinate animal staying away from basking areas and food, slowly dying of stress-enhanced hypothermia and starvation.

If the physical and social environments inside the enclosure are not a problem, then the macroenvironment must be evaluated. Has the placement of the enclosure been changed (to a different room or different part of the original room)? Are children or pets annoying or scaring the reptile (think food chain/predator-prey relationships here as well as the annoyance factor of children)? Have you moved your household? Had to evacuate due to a natural disaster? Had the in-laws over for the week, totally disrupting your usual animal maintenance (and playtime) schedule? Been gone on vacation? These are all things that may seem like they wouldn't intrude on the life of our captive reptiles but, for many of them (especially iguanas and other social lizards), most definitely do.

There are also the things that go on behind your back... One woman found out from neighbor, who observed what was going on through the window while the owner was at work, that her cat would sit staring into her iguana's enclosure, nose pressed up against the glass, for hours at a time when the owner was at work. Since the cat never engaged in this behavior when the owner was home, she never thought there was a problem with the cat. Another woman found out that her husband was turning off the heating equipment in her reptile's enclosure at night after she went to bed "to save money - it's a cold-blooded animal, so it doesn't need heat all the time" was his rationale when she finally figured out why her reptile was sick and stressed. So, just because you are not directly observing something going on doesn't mean that something isn't happening to result in fear and stress in your reptile. You may need to become a sort of detective in carefully and deeply assessing everything that goes on in and around your reptile's enclosure as well as exploring as much as you can of the animal's natural history before you will be able to figure out what isn't right.

Please note that if your conditions have not been set up appropriately before reading this material, the shedding, defecation, and growth patterns you have come to expect from your reptile may in fact be abnormal. Reptile owners who have no previous experience with healthy reptiles believe that since their reptile is alive, eating, and defecating, that they are healthy. One 4-H reptile program leader informed me, for example, that ball pythons never shed in one piece. Her snake was covered in patches of unshed skin representing 3-4 different sheds, its eyes deeply dented from retained eye caps. Her snake was not healthy, but she insisted that, since that was the way her snake had always been, and that since it was alive and moving around, that it was "normal" for the species! I frequently encounter iguana owners who tell me that their iguanas defecate only once or twice a week even though they are eating daily. This tells me right away that their temperatures are too low. Once they are raised to the proper levels, the owners are often dismayed to find that, not only does the iguana increase its food intake, but its digestion speeds up to the proper rate, resulting in often copious defecation one or more times a day, depending upon the season. Most of these owners also find that their iguana isn't really as tame as they thought it was.


and just so I don't get tagged AGAIN for stealing info heres the whole artical
http://www.anapsid.org/signs.html

Ed...that was a long post!

and

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Freakie_frog again.


:rockon:

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Originally Posted by rabernet

Just an observation, but it is sometimes difficult to offer opinions and suggestions to you, because it appears that you ask for feedback, but then dismiss it and offer reasons why it doesn't apply to YOUR snake.

I understand that tone is difficult to interpret in the written word, and that may not be what you're trying to do, but I have observed on more than one occassion, good solid advice being offered by experienced keepers here and then seemingly dismissed as not applicable to your snake. It does make one pause before deciding if they want to write a thoughtful response to your questions.

Just some food for thought.

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Partly I've had to sort through alot of conflicting information since getting my snake. When somebody presents me with something like that I will often debate the issue a bit to see the reasoning behind it.

Also, I like to debate stuff and I don't like to do anything unless I really understand *why* I'm doing it. I suppose it just tires some people out who would prefer I just take their advice and move on.

And, with regards to this post, there are any number of threads on this forum that show that people's experiences vary alot and, often times, don't fall into a "right" or "wrong" category. That was really all I was trying to say.

Freakie_frog: No sarcasm at all. In my experience I have noticed changes in my BP's tendency to ball even though I pick him up the same way every time. My main intent was to try to steer things towards something more constructive and I have been genuinely curious about what the signs are. The article you reference is awesome except I wish that she had discussed each of the symptoms in a little more detail. My snake does show one or two of them but I have no way to interpret their meaning.

i just want to throw something in here.... i got my first ball python many months ago, and used all the info here to get him eating and set up his enclosure "the right way". i did question alot of things but then i looked at it through the snakes point of view and not my pet point of view. i changed my display viv, to a more snake friendly viv, and i haven't had a problem with him since.

Hi Bearhart,


It takes time and experience to interpret them correctly.

While I can understand that you want to know the barebones why of everything in the meantime ( untill you have spent the time and gained the experience) it really isn't all that helpfull to constantly give other people the same conflicting information you were given while seeming to disregard the opinions of those who already have aquired extensive husbandry knowledge the hard way.

And while there are indeed variations they are usually best left to people who truly understand what they are doing and why when they introduce them - I've said this to you before iirc.

And PLEASE don't give out vetinary advice on reptiles based on human anatomy.


dr del

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Originally Posted by bearhart

I suppose it just tires some people out who would prefer I just take their advice and move on.

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I don't think that's true at all. I think what frustrates a lot of people is that you ask for opinions and then give anecdotal evidence to the contrary of whatever you are told, all when you are having issues that every single experienced keeper says will be the result of incorrect husbandry.

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Originally Posted by bearhart

And, with regards to this post, there are any number of threads on this forum that show that people's experiences vary alot and, often times, don't fall into a "right" or "wrong" category. That was really all I was trying to say.

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I don't think anyone disagrees with this. I think people here are very careful about what advice and opinions we dispense about proper care and what has been proven over time to work best for stressed animals. Not all of us follow every bit of 'expert advice' all the time, as we find what works best with our animals over time. But for a new user with a pet they brought home from a pet store with all the wrong advice, it's helpful to start with the basic setup that has been proven to keep animals healthy.

I hope this was as diplomatically worded as Robin's post, I think we all know that isn't one of my talents :rolleyes:

I've had experience with both larger glass vivs and now the much more compact tub set-up. I've gone from one snake to 6 and although my collection isn't vast I've gone from beginner to pretty experienced when it comes to my husbandry in the last two years. When my 2 snakes were hatchlings kept in glass vivs they ate fine despite my husbandry not being spot on. As they grew bigger they would fast, not eat consistently, and so on. This is when I made my switch to tubs and a rack system and have never been happier. My only problem now is trying to keep humidity down as opposed to up. I think a lot of times people's emotions clutter the facts of keeping a pet healthy, what we think they "feel" is nothing close to what they actually feel. We will never know what they feel because there is no way to interpret a snakes feelings. In situations like this when there is no way to accurately interpret feelings we must rely on what has been proven successful. To simply say "i feel bad for him going in circles" and therefore he needs more space is irrational. What if he's out there going in circles because he's stressed that he has too much space?

Bear I completely understand your questioning nature, I've one myself. Personally in the greater scheme of snakekeeping I consider my self a reasonably educated noob...there's still SO much to learn and it's one of the greatest joys I think of snakekeeping that one is always learning, adjusting and striving for the best for our scaley friends.


What I have found over a few years and a few snakes is there are general guidelines and those are the ones we "preach" here. Those are common sense guidelines based on hands on experience, however, one adjusts here and there for the uniqueness of the snake, but always with the intent that any adjustment is for the snake's benefit first and ours second (if at all).

I find sometimes a practical example from someone's collection helps me best to understand a concept so I'll give you an example of stress in a snake we experienced last night.

We have two male ball pythons, both 06's, both great feeders and both within grams of each other in size. One, however, adjusted to handling with ease, the other, not so much. Now both were out for a bit of supervised exercise on the snake room floor last night. This was the result....

Snake #1 who is more accepting of human beings immediately began to explore the area in a slow and determined manner. When I moved him or gave him a gentle stroke his body did not tense his muscles, ball up or otherwise acknowledge me but just adjusted to my touch and went about his business of checking out the area.

Snake #2 who is the more nervous snake immediately went into an S defensive strike position and froze for a time. When he finally relaxed somewhat and began to explore if I reached to touch him he felt "stiff" compared to Snake #2. So even though he began to explore much as Snake #1 was doing, he was obviously feeling threatened and stressed.

Stress can be just this subtle. A tenseness of muscle but until you've experienced two snakes doing much the same activity you wouldn't necessarily clue into it. You might assume that once Snake #2 was exploring it was therefore now not stressed when in actuality he was still in a very stressed "place". Of course, due to this Snake #2 was returned to his enclosure quietly after a bit of time...enough to allow him to build some out of enclosure skills but not enough to put him off the experience all together.

Hope that helped somewhat.

Large cages have to be hard to heat. Too much open space.. retaining humidity would have to be pretty tough as well, I would think.
I like a smaller tub because the snake has his choices: warm spot. Cool spot. Middle ground with water bowl. They are simple creatures, and this gives them the ability to thermoregulate: I go on this side to cool off; that one to warm up. It's not "Oh; I am slithering around.. it's warmer here.. cooler here.." I would think that larger caging would make for patchy, inconsistent heat spots.

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Originally Posted by Ginevive

Large cages have to be hard to heat. Too much open space.. retaining humidity would have to be pretty tough as well, I would think.
I like a smaller tub because the snake has his choices: warm spot. Cool spot. Middle ground with water bowl. They are simple creatures, and this gives them the ability to thermoregulate: I go on this side to cool off; that one to warm up. It's not "Oh; I am slithering around.. it's warmer here.. cooler here.." I would think that larger caging would make for patchy, inconsistent heat spots.

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On a side note: I think that adult BPs definately need a large-enough tub to stretch out in, especially at night when they are active.. I hate seeing a large female, for example, cramped into anything smaller than a 41-quart tub. They can't even stretch out corner-to-corner in a smaller tub. I oftentimes wake up at night and look into the tubs (I use 41-qts) and see the snakes stretched out and exploring. I would worry about them if they could not do this; then again with a rounded tub maybe they could simply go around the parameter and stretch out?
But some smaller adults would be fine in a smaller tub I guess, maybe 2/3rds of the 41-qt size? There is a happy medium, then there is too big and too small.