What's With Keeping Snakes In Racks Small Without Hides?

[zina10]

Hi,

Over the years I have tried both, and various substrates in them.



Disagreeing is allowed so no need to leave for a while.

All I can say is my snakes do better in a tub than they ever did in a large vivarium **shrug** I use newspaper substrate which they can get under if they feel exposed so, essentially, the entire tub is a hide that touches them on all sides even if they move from one end to the other. The only bit they cannot get under is where the heavy ceramic water bowls are.



I mainly find the most common thing they do with climbing structures once they get older is fall off them and look affronted at you. Males seem better at not doing so but I always worried they would fall on the rim of the waterbowl and hurt themselves.

My tubs are wardrobe drawers approx 3 foot by 2 so they can stretch ok from what I have seen - and they consistently eat better than they did in vivs ( my snakes only given as the example as I am familiar with them in both ) And I think you underestimate just how stubborn bp's can be if they do not like their environment. For decades everyone swore they were dodgy eaters in captivity - there is a reason we have as many keepers as we do posting their snakes eat ok. The snakes didn't change, the husbandry did.



This is sadly true - many ways work for all the various snakes out there. We have a narrower focus on what we recommend precisely because it will give fussy snakes the best chances of a good start and the more robust ones won't care and eat anyway. Once you can read your animals well enough there is little problem with mixing things up as long as you are prepared to deal with any problems that pop up.

Tolerance wouldn't hurt the community in this regard but, since we normally get people joining because they have a problem, we do over emphasise the basic model as we do not yet know the users capabilities. We'll work on it.


del

And yes, I will quote this post too, because another EXCELLENT one, that bears repeating !!!

That said, I keep most of my snakes in racks, but used to keep them all in tanks (first) and wonderful cages (later on).

Nowadays I only have ONE great display cage. I do enjoy it, and husbandry is SPOT ON, but I don't doubt for one second that the snake would actually prefer the rack. But that's just based on my experience and knowing my animals after many years of keeping them.

Racks can work great, cages can work great, tanks can be made to work, but they aren't ideal.

All across the board, the husbandry has to be RIGHT.

And if done right, yes, there are different ways to go about it. It only becomes a problem when one or the other is put down, when people say the animal "suffers" just because of what enclosure one has. There is a lot more to keeping them successfully, then just the enclosure..

Btw. It also makes a difference which species of snake one is talking about. I wouldn't keep Carpet Pythons, Russian Ratsnakes or any other species that enjoys more space and climbing in a rack. But I find Ball Pythons do EXCEPTIONALLY well in them.