Snake Emergency

[Jay_Bunny]

For the first time in a long time Virginia has had a snow storm. And we all know that means power outages. We are currently moving in with my mother in law and so the majority of our animals still live at our apartment. Because of the snow, we fed all the animals earlier today and had a friend check on them tonight. Our apartment lost power and so we rushed over there. We have no idea when the apartment lost power but it was definitely below room temperature. Thankfully the snake racks retained a little heat, but the corns and the boa were all cold to the touch. We got as many pillow cases as we could and moved them over. Most of the balls are 2 to a bag, one having 3 of our males since they are smaller. The corns are in a bag and the boa is in a bag. We have 9 10-hour heat packs. We do have a space heater and intend on using it to heat the room up, but what should we do about them being in the pillow cases? We could possibly move them into some tubs, but the tubs have no ventilation holes and we have no way of making any. And we only have 3 tubs, maybe 4. We did bring over two enclosures for the corns, but the boa is still without an enclosure of her own.

So any advice?

[hoax]

Wow. If you have them in tubs just move your tubs...

Other then that maybe use boxes that you seal up some how and poke hols in it. I know it is a bad situation, I just don't really know what else to suggest as I have never had this problem.

Mike

[Jay_Bunny]

We only have 4 tubs. They normally are in a rack system but because the back end of my jeep was damaged in an accident this past summer I can't open the back, therefore I can't move the racks. We are going to try and borrow a truck tomorrow if the roads are not too bad and move the racks over, but I'm not sure if we will have a truck available.

[Jay_Bunny]

We found some more pillow cases so we are going to put everyone into their own individual pillow cases and then we are going to put everyone in tubs (open of course) and use a space heater to heat the room. I really don't think the heat packs are going to do us any good because they are only good for 10 hours. We will use them if we lose power here.

[mainbutter]

A bit to ease your mind:

Snakes that normally live with BP-range temps will be fine for sustained periods of temperatures of 60-70 degrees. It's not ideal, but think of all the people out there who house BPs for a year+ at a time with no heat. Truly long periods of time are certainly detrimental, but unless you hit the 50s and below before the power returns, I'd bet on all of your snakes having zero problems for a few days.

Colder temps than that... the solutions I can think of all involve moving your snakes to a friend's/family member's house with power or something much more expensive.

[mainbutter]

I forgot to say, good luck and keep us informed!!

[Jay_Bunny]

So they will be ok at room temperature for a day or two? We can use a space heater to boost the room temp to 75 or more. Not sure that my mother in law would like that, but I'll pay her entire March electricity bill if need be.

We have put them all in their own pillow cases. We wanted to keep them separate from each other to minimize stress. My husband is setting up the heater. We put the snakes in a walk in closet and we are aiming the heater towards the closet.

[Jay_Bunny]

We were really worried about the snakes getting RIs. I thought I saw somewhere that low temperatures can cause RIs (like when you cool sometimes in the breeding season). We just had to treat our rescue ball for an RI and it would be very expensive to treat all 12 of the snakes for RIs.

[RichsBallPythons]

thats why i have a indoor coleman porpane heater. it lasts 5 hours per 16oz tank. and it gives off oxygen no fumes. cost about 60$ but well worth it. you can also get hot had packs fomr sportinggoods. and put them in pillowcases for added heat.
http://www.coleman.com/coleman/colem...ategoryid=3000

[JLC]

Lower temps put your snakes at risk for an RI...but it's not an automatic sentence. Keep things as stress-free as possible and don't feed them and they'll all most likely be fine, as butter said. So long as the temps don't get frigid. If you can keep it in the 70's you'll be fine.