Hognose: The good, bad and ugly....

This is all of you Hognose snake owners. Getting a hognose is on my list of snakes, but I've heard many stories about them that keeps me sitting on the fence. Although you can't help but to love that adorable stuck up nose.

So if you own one of these cuties with an attitude, tell me about yours and the good, bad and ugly they display :sweeet:

They are possibly the second cutest of all snakes after Rhino Nosed Rat snakes :) ..
Being hypersensitive to just about everything I can't risk having one ( or more) due to them being rear-fanged and mildly venomous ...



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The good

Great snake, easy to care for, fun personality, fantastic feeders (females)

The bad

The are venomous and while they are not prone to bite (I am usually a bite magnet and never been bit by a hog) it is something to keep in mind because even though the venom is mild and the delivery method is poor reaction vary from an individual to another.

Unreliable feeders (males)

I second everything Deborah has said. They're great pets, very active and full of personality. The girls eat like pigs, but I've had no luck getting my boy off live and onto f/t. I hope I can before he gets big enough to eat hoppers. Hognose snakes don't constrict, they just chomp, so I'd prefer not to feed anything big enough to cause damage.

...and unlike Deborah I have been bitten a few times. Usually because I forget to wash my hands after handling the mice I breed. Out of those few times, only one broke skin (hungry girl, she latched onto my finger and chewed until I got to the nearest sink).

I had no reaction to the venom. If someone assaulted my finger with a thumbtack I think it would do more damage then her fangs did.

I started out with hognoses when a breeder gave me a very kinked hatchling a couple of years ago. She lived a year and a half before passing naturally, and even though I have a corn snake and ball pythons I missed her so much I recently picked up a pair of hatchlings. This pair is already super fast compared to Kinky, the kinked hog, but they all have seemed to be pleasantly engaging. Also, when they're grown up I'll be able to use the same prey size mice as my corn snake, but they are my only snakes on shredded aspen (a tiny amount currently, lol.)

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I had feeding issues with my male. Started off eating f/t pinkies (unscented) as advertised by the breeder. Within ~3 months, he decided that he was deathly afraid of tongs / hands and thus, would no longer take non-moving f/t prey. I got him to take live rat pinks a few times (which I didn't regularly have available) so I ended up rehoming him to someone who produced live for him and he is now doing fine. With me, he got into pretty much starvation condition due to constant feeding strikes, etc. so I was glad to place him with someone who could produce live regularly to feed him.

Due to that experience, I haven't been back for another try lol. If I do, I'll go with a well-established juvie female that is eating unscented f/t in hopes that she will be a good feeder.

On the good side, they are cute and active and seem to be pretty hardy.

Mine never bit, so I can't attest to how I'd react to the venom.

To start, I agree with a lot of what has been said already.

My boy, Cosmo came to me unexpectedly after a former coworker asked me to try to get him to eat. Apparently he was over a year old and had never eaten for her in the six months she had him and had only eaten once in a few months for the previous owner. So I agreed to try to get him eating for my coworker and once established she would take him back. Well, cruising over the details, she was fired and disappeared. After a few months of her barely replying to texts, etc... I kinda assumed I'd end up keeping him.

I'm super stoked it worked out the way it did. Cosmo is an awesome little snake. He came to me at 11 grams in late March and by mid August he had hit 40 grams and was doing well.
However, he went of food for a bit... until last night!!! He actually ate last night for the first time in 4 weeks. I wasn't sweating it, just figured he was a male hognose doing what they do.

All in all, my experience with Cosmo has been great. He's an adorable little goofball with tons of personality. He handles extremely well and has shown no real defensive behaviors that can be common from what I've read. He will occasionally puff up his neck, but has never struck, rattled his tail at me or even hissed at me. He will hiss and fake strike at his prey sometimes when I'm putting it into his enclosure using tongs, then I just leave it and he eats a few minutes later (with the exception of his feeding strike).

So, in closing, I would advocate for adding a hognose to the family as long as you're aware of the rear-fangs and extremely mild venom and horrible delivery system. That said, I have read of VERY few hognose bites and even fewer bites that resulted in any adverse reaction.

I will definitely be adding another hognose to my family at some point.

The venomous thing has been covered.

The only other "bad" I would put out there is that their metabolism is higher so they tend to crap a LOT and for some reason they seem to like to wait until 30 seconds after you just cleaned their tub to do it and then spread it around... So I clean their tubs first and then go back and clean their tubs again once I am done cleaning everyone else. And then I come back and clean their tub again the next day.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by asplundii

The venomous thing has been covered.

The only other "bad" I would put out there is that their metabolism is higher so they tend to crap a LOT and for some reason they seem to like to wait until 30 seconds after you just cleaned their tub to do it and then spread it around... So I clean their tubs first and then go back and clean their tubs again once I am done cleaning everyone else. And then I come back and clean their tub again the next day.

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This is a good point that hadn't been covered. Also, by comparison to any other snakes I've kept (BPs, Kings, corns) hognose poop is BY FAR the most stinky. It honestly smells like cow manure to me. And how a tiny little snake can poop such a tiny little poop that packs such a punch is beyond me. But, proper spot cleaning eliminates the problem.

My husband's hoggie has a lopsided head, and I think has vision issues on one side, so it her affects her behavior and feeding. Due to that, once she gets the feeder in her mouth she eats great, and once you get her in-hand, she's fine being handled, but she can be very flaky beforehand. We've both been bit a few times until we figured out the best way to approach her, but only once resulted in an envenomation. For a while we were feeding her outside her enclosure due to her issues, and when I picked her up to put her back, she was still in food mode and tried to eat my finger. It itched for a little while, not even as bad as honeybee stings for me. Since then, she eats in her enclosure.

Exchange while I was being viciously nommed by a small snake:
Husband: "I can't find the vodka"
Me: "Just grab the good rum! She's trying to drag me away!" [emoji16]


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