You Have a WHAT in Your Basement?!

I run a snake farm.

This is a comparatively small operation (four breeder snakes, none over 4 feet long), more analogous to the guy who lives on the edge of town and keeps a chicken or two, than a full blown, free range, acre-upon-acre, ranch-type deal.

I feel it is only appropriate to point out here that the lovely Angela allows this to go on in her house with relatively little resistance, and I am deeply grateful. In order for you to be able to fully appreciate the magnitude of her tolerance, let me relay a charming anecdote from our first year of marriage.

It was nearing my birthday, and Angie made the mistake of asking me what I wanted. While she knew I had a pathological interest in snakes, she had no true idea of how deeply it ran. I wanted a pair of corn snakes; of course—what else would a newlywed request from his blushing bride. I will omit the details of the lengthy discussion that followed. I’m still not sure how I ever convinced her, although I do have a vague recollection of a week long hunger strike and several nights of feigning sobs into my pillow as we went to sleep. Anyway, some time around my birthday, I had two (male and female) hatchling corn snakes housed in a 10 gallon tank that I kept in a storage nook just off the living room. They ate several meals with no problem and everything seemed to be going great.

However, like many couples’ first apartments, ours was small and drafty. This meant two things. There were only a few places that were not “main rooms” (where I had been forbidden to keep the snakes) that were also remotely warm enough that they would not immediately freeze. Hence the storage nook. Turns out it was not warm enough either, and I never did get around to installing the dimmer switch on the under tank heater. As a result the cool zones in the tank were just plain cold, and the warm zones were scorching. As you might expect, the snakes began to refuse meals due to a digestive problem, the onset of which corresponded with the worsening of a previously undetected mite infestation. The snakes got skinnier and skinnier and more and more listless, and I soon expected their demise.

Here is where things went truly awry. The snakes could not just die and prove my care inadequate. Oh no— they had to ESCAPE FIRST! I think several weeks of not eating had made them just slender enough to squeeze through the crack between the tank walls and frame of the pre-manufactured, clip-on screen top.

Words cannot describe the distress this caused my poor wife. Oddly, my assurances that the roaming serpents would not survive more than a few days to terrorize her were of little consolation. Go figure! At some point, though, she found it in her heart to forgive me, and harmony again reigned in our little home.

Then my mother-in-law came to visit. I know what you are thinking, but it is not like that. I get along with my wife’s parents just fine and, in fact, rather look forward to their visits. For her part, my mother-in-law was sweet enough not to complain about having to sleep on the couch (we had only one bedroom and one bed at that point). It was the dead snake under the seat cushion with which she took issue.

After that there was a new rule in our house. No. Snakes. Allowed.

Fast forward about 9 years. A combined set of complicated circumstances involving my job moving me to back to Wisconsin where I had access to facilities outside of my domicile at which I could keep snakes. The fountain of grace that is my wife modified the rule above and I quickly acquired 2.4 (2 male, 4 female) corn snakes that I intended to use as breeding stock. Fast forward 4 months. My job moves me back to Ohio. Somehow, I am allowed to keep the snakes in my daughters room. You read that correctly; I have no explanation (they were in hibernation and kept in a cold corner in bins under a sheet. See a picture of said bins below)

Fast forward (last ff, I promise) 3 months, we sell our home and purchase/move into one with a basement, as well as no bedroom that actually gets cold enough to hibernate reptiles in. The snake farm takes up residence in the basement and things get busy. My brother helps me construct a room so that people who do not wish to see the snakes do not have to as well as to keep the cat from trying to get at the babies.

Breeding snakes is relatively simple and the process goes something like this. You start with healthy male and female snakes of breeding age. Keep them well fed and house them separately in a suitable environment. I use plastic bins kept in a custom built rack (building this tested the limits of my carpentry skills to the extreme!) heated with electric heat tape wired through a dimmer switch. In the winter turn the heat off and let them hibernate at 45-65 F for about 2 or 3 months. Warm them in the spring and resume the proper feeding schedule. After their first shed skin of the year, they will be "in season" and introduce a single male into the female's enclosure. Breeding, in my limited experience, usually ensues rather quickly. Occasionally, if the female is not yet "ready" she will fight off the male; when this occurs, I usually wait a week and try the pair again-- this has worked every time.

After about 45 days and another shed skin, the females are ready to lay their eggs, which they do in a plastic shoe box filled with wet spaghnum moss. I usually place this in their enclosure when the female "turns blue" prior to her pre-oviposition shed. See results below

The eggs hatch after an average of 9-10 weeks of incubation. Prime temperature is about 85 F, although my incubation set up does not allow me to hold that precise a temp. Still, I have had excellent success at temps ranging from 75-85 degrees.

When the eggs are ready to hatch, the snakelings cut slits in the eggs, then emerge a day or so later. A clutch of eggs seems to take 2-3 days to hatch out, occasionally 4. I believe this window of time to be longer than "normal" due to lack of uniformity in incubation temperature.

After the snakes hatch, I put them in a miniature version of the enclosures the adults enjoy.

Within a week or so of hatching, the neonates will shed their skin for the first time. After this they are usually ready for their first meal-- they are fed newborn, or "pinkie" mice. Most pet stores will buy a newborn snake after they have voluntarily eaten two or three meals. Average price I get from a pet store is $12.50 per snake. Private parties have paid me $15 to $22.50.

Sounds like a breeze doesn't it. I have, however, encountered some difficulties.

Snakes can get sick. If it is anything more than the most minor of illnesses, they require veterinary care. This is not something I wish to pay for, nor do I really have the means. So, when one of my females quit eating after laying her first clutch of eggs, I was truly worried. Then green goo started oozing from her mouth, and I knew I was going to lose a productive animal (her first year of egg production for me she laid one less egg than the snake who laid the most, even though she was much smaller). Rather than let her waste away, I put her in a ziploc bag and tossed her in the freezer where she simply went to sleep and never woke up. That took me down to 2.3. With only three females, I really only needed one male so I sold one to a pet store for the same amount I paid for him. Down to 1.3.

The other problem I ran into was getting some of the more stubborn neonates to start eating. In the wild a baby corn snake's first several meals will often consist solely of cold blooded prey such as small lizards and tree frogs. This means that captive bred snakes, especially if they are the offspring of wild caught breeding stock (which 4 of my original breeders were) are not always too eager to start eating pinkie mice right out of the egg. It is not that they are too small, just that the mouse smell does not trigger a feeding response from the snake.

The solution to this difficulty is rather simple, but for some reason it took me a long time to break down and implement it. I was sure those little guys would get hungry enough and just start eating mice eventually. Finally I gave in. I went to the local pet store and bought an anole. Most of you know what this lizard is even if you don't think you do. They are often sold in pet stores as chameleons, and while they can change from green (their normal color) to brown to gray, they are not true chameleons and are, in fact, native to the southeastern US-- same as corn snakes. I took the pinkie mice I intended to feed to the heretofore non-eater snakes, and rubbed them all over with this lizard to impart it's scent to them. It worked like a charm. 100% of the snakes that had not taken a meal started eating and were quickly trained to eat unscented mice.

Oddly, this year, even the lizard scent trick has failed to get some of my meal refusing snakes to eat. I have lost 3 to self-starvation so far.

That may prompt some of you to wonder just how many snakes my farm produces anually. Last year, 49 of 52 eggs hatched, one baby died for unexplained reasons, and I had sold the rest by march of this year.

Despite haveing one less female, my remaining snakes produced 55 eggs this year, largely due to a better feeding schedule. 54 eggs hatched and so far three have not made it due to meal refusals. I have already sold 15, and am getting rid of 12 more next week. Below is one of the more attractive hatchlings I produced last year.
Corn snakes come in a staggering assortment of selectively bred color and pattern mutations. These are called cultivars. To veiw the variety available click here. I am currently working with a male that appears to be hypomelanistic (having less than the normal amount of black pigment, sort of halfway to albino). I am conducting breeding trials to confirm this. Two of my females are anerythristic (having no red or "black albino"). These snakes are greay and black. When you combine the two traits, you get ghost corns. Kind of a faded version of the anerythristic. The cool thing about this is that, once I finalize my breeders, I can get 4 different kinds of offspring from just one pair of snakes due to two different recessive traits combining differently in the offspring (you may want to review your punnet squares from high school science). One clutch of eggs could theoretically produce normal, hypomelanistic, black albino, and ghost corn snakes.

It is just this sort of thing that holds my interest in this endeavor and makes all the work worthwhile.