Quote Originally Posted by Neal View Post
Rat snakes can climb and I've had them before so I can attest to this from experience but this doesn't mean you have to provide climbing spaces. A terrestrial cage would be fine, just make sure to provide some hides. They can be elaborate or simple as far as setup goes so it's more or less how difficult you want to make it on yourself.

Also keep in mind that I've never had a Red tailed rat but I've had rat snakes in the past so I'm giving you my general information with my experiences with them.
Dear Neal, are you seriously suggesting to keep an arboreal colubrid in a terrestical setup? Obviously I am new here, but I am keeping snakes since 1984 and I kept Gonyosoma oxycephalum for more than 15 years. If they have the opportunity they will stay in the highest branches of your enclosure and will seldom come to the ground. So providing them no branches to climb on is against their nature and is in my opinion a cruelty against this snake.

@Bugmom: Gonyosoma is an active snake which likes to climb, so you should provide it with a tall enclosure. If you give it lot of room (like as much space as you can afford) it will repay you with an active behavior during daytime which will be much more interesting as any TV program. An enclosure of 4 x 2 x 5 ft would be good for a pair, if you add another foot in depth ( 4 x 3 x 5) your snakes might even be calmer because they can keep their distance to you during maintenance etc.

Use some substrate which keeps moisture like some soil or something like “ReptiBark”, I would not use aspen. Add some large branches which the snakes can use to climb and rest. You can also add life plants for climbing like Ficus benjamina or Ficus elastic and they will also help to keep the moisture up. You don’t need any UTH, your snakes will not stay on the ground for long. I use some different lights for heating (HCI or Halogen) and with horizontal branches in different heights you get a nice temperature gradient. Spray some water at least twice a day, because most of the snakes drink the water droplets but might not drink from a water bowl.

I don’t know about the situation in the US, but here in Germany (or in Europe) Gonyosoma is bred on a regular basis, so it is no problem to get CB younglings. I would not buy WC, they have a high mortality rate due to parasites and bad handling during transport.

Gonyosoma is curious and will watch you during maintenance. If you come to close to it, it might bite you, but most of them will just watch you. If you have to handle them, some might bite you but even here most will just try to escape. This is not a snake to play with, but is always fun to watch in a large enclosure. It’s usually not as bad as AdamL8 said it is, most of them are no “balls of fury”, at least if you get CB snakes. WC might be another matter, but as I said before I would not get any WC Gonyosoma in the first place.

Feeding might be a problem for very young snakes because they won’t accept young mice at first, but most of them will get used to mice after a short while. After that, feeding them with mice of appropriate size is no problem.

Roman