Thoughts on communal housing?

[Roman]

If your enclosure for the adult snake(s) is large enough it should be no problem to house a pair of them together. I kept a male Orthriophis taeniurus frisei for 19 years, but I have no personal experience with Orthriophis taeniurus callicyanous or keeping them as pairs or groups. However, I keep a lot of my snakes in pairs or even groups and I had no problems doing it.

Blue beauty's (like pretty much all snakes) are not social and housing them together, unless in a very large setup, is ill advised. They get fairly large and it would be difficult to provide both with their own identical hot spots, hides, and personal space. Without this consideration, one snake is likely to suffer and stress to the benefit of the other.

There are a lot of snakes living in groups or even communities in the wild (Malpolon and Psammophis show a real social behavior and a male will present his female a mouse during courtship, some rattlesnakes live in communities, garter snakes etc.). So most snakes don’t need another snakes company, but most don’t mind if there is enough room for them to keep their distance if they choose to do so.

You have to provide enough resting and hiding places for both snakes, with sufficient room that both snakes could use it. Feeding them might be a bit of a problem, since they have an enthusiastic feeding response. If the enclosure is big enough it should be manageable.

Here is a picture of my enclosure for my 1.2 tiger rat snakes (Spilotes pullatus) as an inspiration how it can be done. The enclosure is 250 x 90 x 190 cm (8 x 3 x 6 ft), the heating is done by four 70W Metal halide lamps, creating a vertical thermal gradient from ca 30°C /86°F under the lamps to ca 23°C / 73°F at the ground. The snakes can choose between resting places in the branches and on top of the cork tubes and in the cork tubes on the ground, in different temperature zones.