Corn is Suddenly Active

[Jay_Bunny]

I've noticed over the past three days that Zim, my corn snake has gotten a little more active than normal. She's coming out and cruising around the cage even in the daytime and during the night she will climb all around the cage. Temps are as follows:

Cool Side: 75
Warm Side: 85 (a little cooler because I had moved the light for a few minutes)
Humidity on the cool side: 52%
Humidity on warm side: 36%

She was fed 7 days ago and is due for a meal but she is not normally this active before a meal. Especially not for 3 days. I am suspecting it was her meal size that might have led to this. Her previous meal was a hopper mouse but the two meals before that were small mice. Could the change in prey size be making her hungry before its time for a meal? Should I stick to hoppers (she eats these no problem, slight bulge in belly) or should I up her to a weanling or small mouse (bulge, takes her a while to eat, but no problems)

[Nifer]

If the hoppers are only leaving a slight bulge in her belly I'd say Zim is gonna want to stick with the weaned.
If the hopper lump dissapears with 24 hours it's not enough food.
It might just be taking Zim a little bit to get used to the new bigger size, but don't doubt corns expanding nature As long as the weaned isn't more than 1.5x the biggest part Zim'll be fine.

[Jay_Bunny]

When I go to the reptile show tomorrow I'll see if I can pick up some feeders. Weanling mice and maybe a few hoppers just in case. Do you know how long frozen feeders last in the freezer?

[Nifer]

Well as I've not had feeders in my freezer long enough to know from personal experience I've been told that if they've been properly frozen they can last for a year or more.
Oh and also, incase it is just a fluke, Zim might have reached that stage where she doesn't feel like hiding anymore, which of course is a good thing

[jjspirko]

I have seen corns and other snakes do this for no apparent reason. Sounds like she is in major growth mode too, during this phase I actually feed small meals twice a week, though many take issue with me for that. I figure in the adolesent state snakes in the wild probally eat as often as they can to fuel growth.

Many times though snakes just start cruising for no apparent reason. It is getting close to fall and burmation in the wild so even if well fed her biology may be telling her to seek more mouses and lizards for winter's sleep.

Anyway nothing to be concerned about, enjoy seeing Zim rather then just a coil under a hide,

[Jay_Bunny]

I do enjoy seeing her out more. She's still on hoppers until I can go to another reptile show and pick up a bag of weanling mice. I think she is getting hungry sooner after eating a hopper. She tends to get active around 5-6 days after eating a hopper. If fed a weanling mouse, she stays quiet all week. Since I have the bag of hoppers, do you think maybe I should feed her every 5-6 days instead of every 7-10 days?

[jjspirko]

Understand that many will disagree but I would feed twice a week like say Sunday evening and Thursday in the morning if she eats and has no issues. Like I said in that 6 month - 20 month growth phase I feed a lot of my animals that way. Smaller and more often, seems to keep them happy and growing quickly and I have yet to see any ill efects.

However, this is counter to common practice and therefore many object despite me having no problems for two decades,

[littleindiangirl]

I have one corn snake that has regurged a few meals. They were a weaned pup, and about 4 days later, we find a glob of fur and a tail. and last week he had 2 wk pup (all we had). I haven't seen anything in his tub, and it was only 2 times he's ever regurged.
This was within the past month too, and we were feeding frozen thawed, so we would give him the smallest weaned we could, but the pickins were getting slim.
We thought it had something to do with the temps when it happened, but I'm more positive it is the size of the prey. Our guy just couldn't handle the larger weaned size yet. I always think the prey is to big because of the size of their head, but I know it should leave a small bulge, so I figured it was fine.