Housing Your Milk Snake

One of the most significant things to recollect about housing your king snake is that not unlike the other snakes, these guys are escape artists. If there's a way out of the enclosure, they can certainly find it, and this suggests you must take additional care to be certain the housing environment is freed from openings, holes, and cracks a tiny snake could get through.

Ensure the enclosure you select or build has a latched lid on it, so that the lid can be closed, but simply opened when you want access to the enclosure. Most young snakes can be started in a comparatively little (ten gallon) tank, but as they grow into healthy adults, they are going to need more space to move around in.

Adults can grow to seven or eight feet long, so imagine the effect of this and being stuck within a ten gallon container. King snakes are active snakes, which suggests they like to ramble about and stretch, therefore the requirement for a large enclosure when they reach maturity. Actually the tank size would ideally be six times the dimensions of the opening starter tank, or sixty gallons, to nicely accommodate an adult king snake.

Housing your king snake could be a fun activity, providing him with places to curve up and hide, branches to turn around, and other obstructions that he may enjoy. Employ a good quality and safe substrate for the enclosure. This may be anything from Astroturf to bark and wood shavings, but if you're using chips, ensure that the snake isn't ready to consume any with his food, and make totally certain that the shavings aren't pine, cedar or redwood. Provide some corpulent bark where he will be able to hide, and perhaps an upturned flower pot or two for additional hiding space.

Having and keeping up the correct temperature within the enclosure is important. This is the essential part to a good healthy snake. You'll need to have under-tank heaters, both horizontally and vertically. Check with your breeder or pet store for the best conditions and temperatures to have this set at, dependent on your overall environmental conditions.

A shallow bowl of water within the enclosure should be adequate to producing the necessary level of humidity. As well as providing the foundation for humidity, this shallow water source will double as the drinking water for your pet. Housing for your king snake will have to be cleaned frequently, and this includes the water source.

King snakes like other reptiles will most likely relieve themselves in their water supply, so this could be checked often. In the summertime months, it may become important to spray a light mist of water into the enclosure at numerous times in the day to keep the humidity up. Don't go overboard, but a light mist will perform miracles for keeping the environment just right for housing your king snake.