There has been a rise in conversation on the topic of cohabbing house snakes. 

The question is often put as “can you cohab house snakes”? Absent of disability you very likely can wrangle two animals into the same box together. Its a physical possibility. So yes, you likely can. That's not what you really want to know though. The question is, should you? How can you know if it’s right for you?

Well, let's talk about that. 

First off, let me say that I'm not against the practice. In fact I cohab my egg eaters myself, but it's irresponsible to endorse it without informing people that it has risks so that they can make informed decisions for themselves and their animals.

How can we make the best choice?

The assessment of benefit vs risk is considered the biases of what defines ethical practice in healthcare and veterinary fields. That's something that I've been raised with and was repeated to me over and over again in college. So when I'm making decisions for my animals I'm always weighing benefit vs risk, and if the risk doesn't outweigh the benefit *for the animal* I don't do it or vice versa. That's what you need to do too. It's a deeply personal decision. I can not answer it for you- but I hope to give you tools.

Cohabitation absolutely can be done ethically, but you need to be willing to hear every variable in order to make that informed decision required of ethical keeping. 

Let's start with the hard part, risk. Here are the potential risks for cohabbing your house snakes, with some ways to reduce those risks:

• Accidental (or otherwise) death or injury during feeding:
  We don't like to talk about it, but it needs to be said. Housies have strong feed responses and one of the risks is that one could end up accidentally killing the other if a feeding episode goes wrong. 
  
  To lessen this risk, feed each individual separately, or place barriers between while feeding. Some house snakes do not eat outside their cages or when security has been compromised so you may need to find creative solutions to promote animal safety. 

 

• Fighting and cannibalism not related to food:
  Yes house snakes can and do fight sometimes. You should always have a spare place to separate them, if they happen to fight. Cannibalism has also been recorded in house snakes both within captivity and in the wild. It's very rare, but we can't say it never happens. It has. 
  
  There really isn’t much you can do if two house snakes are prone to fighting, but separate them. You can reduce the risk of cannibalism by making sure every animal in the group stays well fed, and by only keeping animals together that are similar in size. 

 

• Stress and even poor health related to competition for resources:
  ​If one animal isn't getting access to hides, heat, egg laying sites, or water, due to competition with others, they may become ill or even die. 
  
  Reduce this risk by offering multiple sites that offer basking, hiding, egg laying, and water access. This way, even if they don't get their first choice pick of these resources, other resources are available. 

 

• Potential disease and parasite transmission across the animals kept together: 
  
  ​If one gets sick, it's likely they all will. In animals that are identical (say all blacks) if you are unable to tell them apart that can really complicate treatment too.
  
  Lessen this risk by keeping a sharp eye on your cohabbed snakes and quarantine any with symptoms immediately. It is prudent to run parasite tests on members of the colony as well; some parasites can reach a colony via prey items offered or even soil. From there, fecal transmission is the most common route and as they are sharing that space exposure is inevitable. 
  
  Which brings me to poop. Another factor here is the waste. Each animal has its own internal fauna that are excreted in its poop. If one animal's fauna (or viral load etc) is very different from another's, their exposure to it could give them issues. It's one of potentially many issues related to immunological naivety. Also more waste being excreted equals a rise in risk of respiratory and skin infections if the enclosure isn't maintained properly. 
  
  Immunological naivety isn't something you can prevent, but you can treat most of the time. In this example you could rebalance the gut flora after it happens. You need to be on top of this and catch it early, a loss of gut flora creates a situation called “refeed syndrome” a potentially fatal situation. Be on the look out for regurgitation of partial or completely undigested prey with no other obvious cause. In a cohabbed enclosure it may be difficult to figure out which one has it to treat them, so you may need to treat them all.
  
  Be sure to keep your enclosure clean, and check their belly scales often to prevent scale rot, just like you'd do with individually housed animals.

 

• Mixed sex ( and sometimes accidentally mixed sex) groups have the additional risk of breeding problems. 
  
  Breeding an animal too young is problematic for their longevity and quality of life. This is well documented across many species of reptile and mammal (including our own by the way). 
  
  I've said it before and I'll say it again, wait for your females to be good and ready. This isn't some virtue signaling when I say that, I don't want you to make the mistakes *I made* and pay the price. So please, don’t cohab a young girl with a mature male. 
  
  The risk we cannot ignore is dystocia (egg binding). It's a medical emergency that has to be caught early, and promptly tended to, or it's fatal. You have a way, way, higher risk of this in a girl not ready than a mature female. It’s the same reason why pregnancy in girls is problematic for us. Internal structures are still small and the eggs may or may not be.
  
  Also, In a cohabbed enclosure, if it's not obvious which animal is the one laying, you may not be able to tell which one has a retained egg, and time is of the essence. I was just walking through this with someone the other day, the girl didn't look gravid at all, and retained not one but 6 eggs. She passed away from sepsis. That's a risk you should know about and try to prepare for. 
  
  Lessen this risk by not cohabbing a young female with mature males, not cohabbing animals you aren't certain of the sex of, and having an established relationship with a qualified exotics veterinarian that offers emergency appointments for snakes ahead of time.
  
  Another one is over breeding. Yes, that can happen. There is a point where an animal's body has nothing left to give and if you don't break them of it, they will die. House snakes are very smart, but some will breed themselves to death.  I've personally been brought to a point of hair pulling frustration when a female just continued to clutch after clutch (slugs after the first two) even after taking actions to break the cycle and I had to make the decision to sterilize her to save her life. I've also seen males refuse to eat for months upon months while their bodies were just wasting away- because they just wanted to keep breeding. These were not even animals that were being cohabbed. In a cohabbing situation mixed sex animals will continue to breed over and over again. The risk in this situation is high in mixed sex enclosures.
  
  I do not recommend keeping mixed sex groups together long term. These are dangerous risks you can not prevent.

 

• Additional risks related to same sex mature cohabbed animals:
  
  When housing mature females together, and allowing males brief incursions into their enclosure for breeding purposes, it can be difficult to assess which animal laid which eggs. That can make the identification of genetics of those hatchlings difficult to impossible even. This becomes a real pain if you have any ‘hidden genes’ pop up, something you really can't account for. This is compounded further if you paired more than one male with different genes involved. 
  
  Lessen this risk by bringing your females individually to your male of choice when using more than one, separate during laying or at least keeping a sharp eye on your enclosures during due dates to try to catch a female in the act of laying. It is critically important that every female have her own access to a suitable laying site to prevent egg binding discussed above.
  
  And as for males… well, homosexuality has been documented in male house snakes. Yep, here’s a research paper on that. Which means even in same sex cohabbing you may still need to separate a homosexual snake from his group if he decides to breed himself to death or causes undue stress to the other inhabitants. That would be a rare one of course, but hey, it could happen. 
  
  Not much you can do about a homosexual snake but separate them. 

Aaaand on that note, we have a fairly full scope of the risks involved. There may be more, and feel free to message if you know of others that should be included.

Now Let's talk about benefits.

The word benefit is defined by the dictionary as “an advantage or profit gained from something”. So what advantage does a cohabbed snake have over those in solidarity?

This really boils down to what standard of proof do you need to be comfortable for your risk level assessment? Do you need that hard species specific scientific evidence that there is benefit? Or does anecdotal work for you? Only you can answer that. 

For those with scientific needs, welp,  I have university level access to every research depository online and I really wanted to be able to formally document this page with irrefutable evidence, but to be completely transparent: Species specific, scientific evidence does not exist to support there is any measurable advantage in cohabitating house snakes over keeping them solitary. 

Now before you get me wrong, I'm not saying there isn't any benefit. I'm just being upfront about the fact I don’t have hard evidence for me to support it like I would usually have before releasing this information to you. There's not a lot of funding for reptile research in the first place, nonetheless studies on these species, and this one just hasn't been studied to the level that we can say any of this has evidence that could stand up to unbiased scientific scrutiny in regards to house snakes specifically. The truth is we don't have that.

But hey If you think you have found some, please feel free to contact me and I will happily update this page with it. 

So what we do have is anecdotes from keepers, and inferences we could possibly take from other species. Some are more helpful than others.

Moving on. It is said that the potential benefits for cohabbing mainly focus upon these two: A calmer demeanor, and social opportunity. Those are fantastic benefits that anyone would want for their snake. So let’s take a look at the sources and evidence behind them. 

Anecdotal evidence strongly exists for a calmer demeanor:

Some keepers report that their communally kept house snakes are calmer than they were before they were communally kept. There's no reason to question the validity of their experience. Keepers often know things long before the scientific community does.  There is anecdotal evidence if you look for it. 

As for scientific literature…. Maybe?

One study frequently cited in forums in support of cohabbing, which you can read here, was performed with Rattlesnakes, and found possible evidence that rattlesnakes may be calmer with a friend: This study measured heart rate (HR) and rattling to determine stress level and tested how the snakes reacted to a stressor.

    Here's some excerpts:

• “Our results supported just one of the three hypotheses tested: emotional tachycardia (change in HR) after exposure to an acute stressor was reduced in the presence of a conspecific [a companion], suggesting that social buffering exists in the species”

But also concludes,

• “The subdued cardiac response to an acute stressor when in the presence of a companion supported our first hypothesis that social buffering exists in the species. However, while the effect was significant at lower levels of baseline HR, we could not detect it at higher levels of baseline HR”. 

In short, the effect only happens if the animal isn't worked up much… which begs the question of how we can conclude having a friend calms an animal if the only time it works is when the animal doesn't need calming?

And perhaps less encouraging,

• “The rattling component of the defensive response seemed to be reduced by either the presence of a conspecific [a companion] or an inanimate object”. And then continues “Defensive behaviors of rattlesnakes are often context dependent, and the perception of cover may influence the adoption of an anti-predatory strategy… the snakes in the bucket might have perceived less vulnerability when in physical contact with the rope [the inanimate object] or another conspecific,.. and therefore rattled less.”
  
  

So one could easily conclude the effect was due to having anything at all in with them given that the presence of an inanimate object also produced the same effect with no companion present. 

So… Maybe? Form your own conclusions of course, but for me this really isn't strong enough evidence to support the claim. Again, just because this doesn't prove it, doesn't mean it can't be true. There's no reason to distrust the anecdotal evidence. So we go back to what is your personal standard of evidence? 

Next we have “social behavior” 

Several of the pro- cohabbing literature refer back to this study, when positing that snakes may have social relationships, based on the fact that some species are known to  aggregate (occupy the same space) in the wild. It states,

• “An examination of the literature indicates that the nature of the relationship between individuals is crucial in determining whether or not social buffering will occur. Other factors that affect social buffering, either directly or by influencing the social relationship, include the social organization of the species”

In short, animals that are communal are more likely to exhibit social behavior than those that live solitary lives. Again, the sources referenced there are based on mammals, but for the sake of exploring this, let's assume it's true. The take away from many of these studies being that animals that have perceived benefit from communal living, tend to be communal in the wild. The strongest evidence to support sociality in snakes all comes from studies done with communal snakes as well (namely garter snakes). So this does make logical sense.. 

So are house snakes communal? 

Overwhelmingly more evidence points to them being solitary than communal. House snakes are typically not seen together outside of a few circumstances.

One is breeding season, which is a biologically driven event that pretty much all species partake in. There are also some sightings of them being found together in the wild, typically two or so at a time, typically in the winter, in areas of limited shelter. One might conclude this is less about social gathering than survival. 

You will not find a large “den” (or hibernacula) of a large number of house snakes together in the wild. They just aren't garters or rattlesnakes.

If you search for wild sightings of house snakes on sites such as INaturalist, you will find the overwhelming amount of them are single sightings. There's also recorded sightings of house snakes eating each other in the wild. 

This suggests that, in the wild, house snakes aren't likely to be social in the way that garter snakes or rattlesnakes are presumed to be. But people will regularly point to studies done with communal snakes as evidence that house snakes or even *all* snakes are social in captivity. Lets think critically here. That's a leap. 

Here's the most viewed one I found. 

In two studies done by the same author, which recently became more popular due to youtube viewership, 

They studied

• “a group of 6 eastern gartersnakes over the first year and a half of their lives. We placed the snakes in an arena for 8 days and recorded the time that they spent in physical proximity to each other. We repeated this 8-day process 7 times across the snakes’ development.” 

So they used their relative position to each other, in a closed space, to define their “social networks”. Then, 

• “The snakes’ social networks were perturbed twice a day by “shuffling” their locations. Despite these disturbances, the snakes eventually re-formed their preferred social environment.” 

And thus concluded with much confidence,

• “Snakes are often considered nonsocial animals, but this is inaccurate”. 

Oh boy. If you look through the references you will see that the assumptions made here on what counts as “social networking” were backed mostly by research done on primates. I hope you can see why that's problematic. 

Yes, monkeys do stand near each other. People who like each other tend to stand near each other. That doesn't mean we can apply that logic to a very limited number of snakes being kept in a box. Those snakes could just as easily be reforming groups based on available resources and dominance. It is a hilariously bold statement to conclude all snakes are social based on nothing but the fact some snakes of this species returned to similar positions after being shuffled inside a box. 

And folks, 6 or 10 animals is nowhere near a statistically significant sample size to be drawing broad conclusions about even that species, and in no way should be considered hard data for an entirely different species.

I can go on, but folks, the more literature you read, the more you will find that it all is referencing back to each other, and all similarly flawed in structure. So with much disappointment, I can not say with my usual flair of scientific accuracy that we can take anything but our own anecdotes too seriously based on what ive been able to find thus far.  The data is painfully weak.

Folks, anthropomorphism is a real thing. Sometimes we want to see parts of ourselves in other organisms. And that's not a bad thing! It helps us to relate and have empathy towards them, makes us treat them better and that's a very good thing. But that doesn't make it fact. Science doesn't operate on feelings and intentions. Fact requires evidence. 

This matters because when we continue to present conjecture as fact, we weaken the credibility of real science in the minds of those who may need most convincing once it’s presented. And it's ok to accept that we’re not there yet. We might very well get there eventually. 

That's not the end of the story either.  We're talking about seriously intelligent snakes here. It's entirely possible that the confines of captivity may produce sociality as a means of adaptation to captive life in cohabitation. We have not ruled that out. 

So do you need hard science to assess benefit or no? The most honest statement we can make here is, no we cant prove it, but there’s plenty of reason to believe your fellow keeper if they say they’ve experienced it. Afterall, they know their snakes better than you.

If you need hard science to weigh the scales with, that may be the end of the conversation for you. That's ok too. 

So, we have some understanding of the risk and benefits.

The ethical choice is the one you make where you believe the benefit to the animal outweighs the risk. Let’s get to the nitty gritty of making the decision. 

First let's address the elephant in the room. There are ethical motivations for cohabbing snakes, and there unethical motivations. 

One motivation people may have to consider cohabitation is for the ability to increase the number of snakes they can breed in a given space. In puppy mill style commercial outfits that may just be the main motivation. More production. No regard for the risk. I ask you, is that a benefit to the kept, or to the keeper?  It's easy to rule in favor of a benefit for yourself when it's not your life at risk. In the benefit vs risk scenario, an unethical keeper is willing to take risks because their benefit is the only consideration. That’s not ethical. 

How do you tell that type apart from those who do it ethically? By example.

Those that cohab for ethical reasons are the type that want to provide a rich environment where every possible venue of improvement in quality of life is considered and provided. They do this to give to the snake, not to themselves. They’ve understood, prepared for, and done everything they can to mitigate the risks to the animals involved with doing so. They have the resources to deal with any surprises. They carefully weighed the scales and found they had the ability to (at least try to) provide a benefit that would outweigh the risk in their mind. 

That's what ethical cohabitation looks like. A respectful conscientious attempt to provide what one believes is the best possible quality of life. It's a beautiful thing, and should not be feared or discouraged. 

Is that you?

Maybe it's not a question for you, maybe you’re trying to assess the ethics of a person that is promoting or engaging in it. Here's some things to consider:

In your exposure with them have they shown that they thoroughly thought through the decision? If they don't care enough to even look into it, their motives may not be entirely ethical. Are they informing you of the risks so you can make an informed decision? Or are they downplaying the risks, and that's the whole conversation?

Have they done what they can to mitigate the risks themselves? If you're looking at their caging, are you seeing species appropriate climates with multiple sites that offer basking, hiding, egg laying, and water access, or are you seeing cramped space with multiple animals that will need to share resources? It's one thing to know, and another to show. 

Are they unwilling to show their own set ups? Those ethically cohabbing are frontiers, they know and respect that they are doing something that others will want information on. They often want to share their experience. The truly mature ones will share their mistakes too. If they seem to have something to hide, you're justified in having a curiosity over why. 

Are they showing that they really weren't prepared? I'm not talking about some common “ the vet is on vacation halp!” kind of stuff that could happen to any of us. Im talking about “I cohabbed these but dont have a spare enclosure whatsoever so I put one of my snakes in a shoebox and taped it shut when they fought, and now im asking the community how to get one safely off the tape at 3am” type stuff. Yes that did happen before (facepalm).

Point is there are ways to do it right and there are ways to do it wrong. 

If you can be honest with yourself about your motivations, abilities, risk tolerance, and resources, plus know your snakes well- than yeah you absolutely could be an ethical cohabber. If the scales don’t weigh in the favor of you cohabbing, there's nothing wrong with that either. Again, it's a deeply personal decision. 

I hope that in some small way, writing this article has helped you in your process of making it. :) 

Step 1: Take a deep breath. Do NOT panic. Its called panic blindness. In highly emotional states we human beings are not as effective at seeing even obvious things. Scarey as it is, your snake has better odds if you remain calm. Blaming yourself, getting frustrated or angry will only hurt your chances at a successful recovery so step #1- deep breaths. keep calm. 

Step 2: Secure the area from hazards and exits. Look for, and remove, anything dangerous in the room and gate off the room that it escaped from. They usually don't travel far. Of course keep any cats or other pets out of there for now. 

Please do not use glue traps!! People will say it works to glue trap them. In larger snakes like ball pythons this has worked, so people will say that about all snakes. It is true it will keep them in place, and yes that may be less lethal than if they get caught by a cat etc., but these guys are way smaller than a ball python that could potentially wiggle part of their face free to keep breathing. If a house snake gets their face stuck down to the trap and it covers or closes their nose and mouth they will suffocate and die. It's not hard to do at this size. Even if they don't the glue will scrape the skin off their scales which can create body wide infections, then sepsis, then death. It's a painful way to die too. Imagine the majority of your skin being ripped off. So please no glue traps. In fact, look for anything sticky in the room like duct tape or anything like that and remove that.  It's just not a solution here. 

Look out for and mesh off heater vents in the floor (window screen wrapped around the registers works), turn off fly zappers, anything you see that could hurt them neutralize the threat. Do this first. They aren't going to be moving much in daylight so its not going to set you back to do this first. Yes we want to find them, but its more important to find them alive, so do this part first. 

Once you've secured the area, it's time to get searching.

A lot of times you will find them very nearby their enclosure in a dark tight space. Most people will tear apart a room from a standing position. Im going to tell you to "think snake". Get all the way down on the floor, with the back of your head touching the floor, near the enclosure and look up. You'll see places you might have missed that way. You may even see them. Systematically go about the room looking from the perspective of on the floor looking up. This is their point of view, so you can see the routes you might not have noticed from a top down position. Dont assume something is too high for them to climb to or too little etc. Just look anyway. 

Once you've gone through that and still haven't found them, sprinkle some powder on the floor in a grid like pattern. This way if they travel they will disturb the powder and you'll be able to see which grid(s) they've been in and what direction they are travelling. This will help you focus the search. They'll come out at night, so turn off the lights and let them think its night time.
​

There are commercial ones you can buy at like bass pro shops or you can even make your own. Place a towel or something over it so that its dark and place near the enclosure, Some like to place them ontop of a regulated heating pad, I dont find that works better per se in a warm enough room, but its a good idea if the room is cold. you dont want it too warm though, 80 degrees or so is plenty. 

​*Water* is a better bait than food. They can survive weeks without food but water- not so much. But a live harmless small prey like a pinky can help entice them to enter too. if you need to choose, water is better.​

Once you've done what you can to do the first search, its time to fix the source of the escape. Maybe the lid gap tolerance was just too loose. Gaps between two sliding glass openings are notorious culprits. maybe there are cord ports that need to be secured a bit. Maybe someone just goofed and left it open for whatever reason. Find it and address it.  It doesn't do you much good to find an escapee to have them escape again. If you are using a commercial produced enclosure odds are very good someone else has had an animal escape it before and has solved it already. Google it and youll likely find out. 

Eventually you will have done what you can, and continuing to look is only exhausting or frustrating you further (remember rule #1!). Its ok to turn off the lights and try again tomorrow. This may just move them into a better position for you to find them.

Lastly, don't give up! Many snakes are found within the first few days. Some are found weeks or even months later! Snakes are resourceful and since you have provided them a safe environment to be captured in, they have good chances to survive! So keep trying.

I hope that helps :) 

For egg eating snakes, periods of not eating really is the #1, and practically only, anxiety producing thing about them. So lets go over it. 

First thing first, I'm sure you already went over the usual husbandry stuff of temperature/humidity /security (hide)? No? Start there first. Yeah? Ok moving on. 

So it's important to know that egg eaters in the wild are boom/bust feeders. This means that they will eat as much as they can for about 3 months (while the birds are laying) and then not eat for the rest of the year. So your egg eater may just not be hungry. Its very normal for them, it doesn't mean there is anything wrong. 

But ok, lets assume they are or may be... 

If you've been consistently syringe feeding them, the odds are high that they just aren't hungry enough to make the effort to take down the egg. Why put in the work when you can get your human to do it for you right? 😂 

So as odd as it sounds if you want that baby to eat eggs, sometimes you gotta stop feeding them to get them feeding. Now you can only do that safely if you know how much they weigh, so you'll need a microgram scale, weigh them, stop feeding them by syringe for 2 weeks, weigh again. If they've lost more than 10% of their body weight, syringe feed until they're back at weight. If not, offer the egg that week see what happens.

If the concern with the syringe feed is that they aren't growing enough to gain size, then the best thing to do would be to use the smallest egg possible and add some of the powdered quail egg to bring up the nutrient density. that will help them grow. There's more details on why that is here.

Having that said, they really don't grow as noticeably as carnivorous snakes do. If you were to "power feed" them (which again is normal for them), they may gain 2-4x their bodies weight in a year- which is still massive growth!  So if they started at say 3g, they might weigh 6-12g within the first year. For a carnivorous snake that starts at 150g getting to 450 is a huge visible difference, but when your egg eating snake starts so tiny, and the change occurs so slowly- it's totally understandable to be anxious about if they are gaining weight. So what to do is to get a gram scale (that can measure in 10ths of a gram for hatchlings), and weigh them whenever you need that reassurance. That way you can see the progress easier.

It can be a little anxiety producing, especially if you come from a carnivorous snake background. Hey Im used to it, and I still do it regularly so it's totally normal to have a little anxiety about it. So get you a gram scale. It helps. 

Ok so now that we've gone over those things, let's talk about what to try to get them onto the eggs.

First up we need to know if the eggs are good. They won't eat them no matter what we do if the eggs are bad or have started to develop a chick inside (no longer entirely liquid).

To test if eggs are good, use the float test. Submerge the egg in water; if it sinks and lies horizontally, it's fresh. If it floats or tilts upward, it's old or bad. Additionally, crack one of the eggs open and inspect the white. It should be thick, slightly cloudy, and not watery. If the white is watery, it's likely an older egg.

Sometimes suppliers collect eggs over several days to acquire enough to send in one shipment, and some bird species have only an 18 day incubation from laid to hatch, so if the egg is starting to develop an embryo (there's parts that are no longer liquid) the snake won't eat them. 

Another thing to consider is how you may be storing them. If you're keeping them in the fridge with your other food items, sometimes the smells from the other food can make egg shells smell odd.

This is especially true of commercially bought eggs because, along with other criteria, for an egg to be USDA-grade, it's required by law that eggshells be sanitized before being packaged and sold. As a result, this process strips the eggshells of their natural protective oils — which makes the shells smell less bird like and the thousands of tiny pores in the shell more easily permeated by strong odors that could be lurking in your fridge. Onions are a notable offender. 

The solution here is to store them in an air tight plastic carton, you can get a basic pack of two off of Amazon for $10 here. Theres fancier models that you can record the dates with and stuff like that too. 

There are evolutionary advantages and disadvantages for each side of the spectrum, both sizes and everything in between.  Forgive me for using an analogy, but you cant expect all housies to be a "basketball players", and you cant expect them to be "horse jockeys" either.

No amount of withdraw or neglect will turn a basketball player into a healthy horse jockey. Regardless of size, if they aren't getting what they need, they wont look healthy.  Their body condition will whither, vital functions will shut down, and they will eventually die. You cant "stunt" a house snake, only thin or fill it out.

Also no amount of "powerfeeding" will turn a horse jockey into a healthy basketball player. You just end up with an obese horse jockey. As obesity is the #1 risk factor for liver failure in house snakes, this is dangerous long term.
 
A note for breeders: While its true you may be able to get a basketball player to their adult size faster with a strong feeder, you should know he's still not going to play until his time ;) And yes a healthy horse jockey will absolutely still perform in his time too. So there's no reason to risk it. 

All that attempting to change your snake into something it's not will do is harm the snake. Again, it is body condition, not size or age, that should really matter.

There are of course the minimum and maximum sizes, but those are averages for when they are adults. Point is, it is more important that the animal is healthy. Does it have good body condition? Does it eat regularly? Is it active? Does it poop and shed and do those things snakes are supposed to? Yes? Then having X vs Y rules to measure against isn't going to tell you anything you don't already know. :) 

I hope that helps some.

​We are currently working out some custom coding issues with the webhost for this page and hope to have it back up soon.

We are currently working out some custom coding issues with the webhost for this page and hope to have it back up soon.

​