So your kid wants a pet snake. You may have some reservations about it being dangerous, hard to take care of, and just down right creepy.
You couldn't be more wrong. As far as dangerous goes, anything you find in a pet store will not be venomous. If you do happen to get bit, a band aid will do the trick. Being bit by a non venomous snake is about the equivalent to having your hand smacked with a cactus.
Also, snakes are one of the easiest animals to care for.. Really all you have to do post setup is keep fresh water in the cage, clean the cage once a month, and throw an appropriate sized rodent in there every one to two weeks. That's right, snakes only eat about once a week at most.
If you don't like snakes because they're creepy, well, you probably won't ever have to look at it. They require so little care that a 6 year old could probably handle it just fine. A snake is a good stepping stone for teaching a young child responsibility. A gold fish actually takes more care than a snake.
If your child wants a snake, I encourage you to make it happen. Snakes make wonderful pets, and can live for over 20 years.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Why I tell people not to get a ball python as their first snake.
When people get their first snake, I want the experience to be a positive one. For this to happen, the snake should be easy to take care of and predictable, there's more to it than a snake that just doesn't bite and is small.
The fact is, people who don't know about snakes do their research and what they're usually looking for is a snake that doesn't bite and is small. They want a ball python, and just to top it off, ball pythons are beautiful.
What people don't know, is taking care of a ball python is a lot like taking care of an anorexic teenager. These snakes as a whole have some pretty solid eating problems. There are exceptions to every rule, and the majority of ball pythons don't have eating problems. But there are a large enough percentage of ball pythons that are finicky eaters that I think it's a bad idea to get one as a first snake.
I've had 3 ball pythons, and two of the three were bad eaters, and I see a lot of people on snake forums who are having similar problems. I'm not saying 66% of ball pythons are bad eaters, I probably got unlucky, but it's mostly agreed upon in the snake community that ball pythons aren't great eaters.
Some ball pythons will go 6 months without eating for no reason at all, and then start eating again for no reason at all. This can be a pretty big problem when someones snake hasn't eaten for 3 months and the owner is freaking out and taking it to the vet.
All snakes have a chance of refusing to eat altogether and potentially starving themselves to death. The only ways to solve this are actually pretty disgusting, such as cutting into a mouse with a razor blade and exposing its brain. This happens more with ball pythons than most other snake species.
If you like live feeding your snakes, beware of ball pythons. I once had a ball python that strangled its food for a good 7 hours without managing to kill it, and then got to a point where it just ate the thing alive.
If you want to know what type of snake to get as a first snake, I say corn snake, king snake, or milk snake. These snakes are small, they aren't biters, but they don't have the pretty coloring of a ball python. I've found all of these snakes to be great eaters. To top it off, you can usually get these for less than half the price of a ball python.
The fact is, people who don't know about snakes do their research and what they're usually looking for is a snake that doesn't bite and is small. They want a ball python, and just to top it off, ball pythons are beautiful.
What people don't know, is taking care of a ball python is a lot like taking care of an anorexic teenager. These snakes as a whole have some pretty solid eating problems. There are exceptions to every rule, and the majority of ball pythons don't have eating problems. But there are a large enough percentage of ball pythons that are finicky eaters that I think it's a bad idea to get one as a first snake.
I've had 3 ball pythons, and two of the three were bad eaters, and I see a lot of people on snake forums who are having similar problems. I'm not saying 66% of ball pythons are bad eaters, I probably got unlucky, but it's mostly agreed upon in the snake community that ball pythons aren't great eaters.
Some ball pythons will go 6 months without eating for no reason at all, and then start eating again for no reason at all. This can be a pretty big problem when someones snake hasn't eaten for 3 months and the owner is freaking out and taking it to the vet.
All snakes have a chance of refusing to eat altogether and potentially starving themselves to death. The only ways to solve this are actually pretty disgusting, such as cutting into a mouse with a razor blade and exposing its brain. This happens more with ball pythons than most other snake species.
If you like live feeding your snakes, beware of ball pythons. I once had a ball python that strangled its food for a good 7 hours without managing to kill it, and then got to a point where it just ate the thing alive.
If you want to know what type of snake to get as a first snake, I say corn snake, king snake, or milk snake. These snakes are small, they aren't biters, but they don't have the pretty coloring of a ball python. I've found all of these snakes to be great eaters. To top it off, you can usually get these for less than half the price of a ball python.
Stop killing snakes out of stupidity!
For starters, I'm not some crazy PETA activist, nor do I have any bizarre infatuation with snakes. I'm just against killing animals, especially when there is no reason to.
Not too long ago I was posting on a website called chazhound or something like that. It was about dogs. On a side note these people were absolutely insane when it came to dogs. They all seemed to think that owning a dog required some high degree of skill that most mortal beings cannot even hope to attain, but that's besides the point.
I came across a post that was about someone killing a snake because it was a threat to their poor dog. This person was an idiot, and I knew it, but calling them out on being an idiot wouldn't solve anything, so I respectfully explained that the black racer they killed was no threat to them, or their dog. I also explained how to identify a venomous snake, which I guess is a more justifiable thing to kill because it actually could harm the dog if the dog gets too interested. Then I asked them not to kill anymore black racers.
I was met with hatred. Among the arguments I was given included explanations of how much more valuable a dogs life is than any other animals, how people don't have time to identify a snake and it's safer to just kill the thing, and my favorite, "You actually have snakes in your house on purpose?!?! What a creep!"
I don't know if these people are just that stupid, or if they're the KKK of animals and they just replaced "white race" with "dog", which I suppose would also make them stupid.
The point is, if you're one of the people who kills snakes because "all snakes are dangerous" you're an idiot.
On the other hand, now you know better, and to continue to kill snakes indiscriminately at this point would make you an even bigger idiot.
/endrant
Not too long ago I was posting on a website called chazhound or something like that. It was about dogs. On a side note these people were absolutely insane when it came to dogs. They all seemed to think that owning a dog required some high degree of skill that most mortal beings cannot even hope to attain, but that's besides the point.
I came across a post that was about someone killing a snake because it was a threat to their poor dog. This person was an idiot, and I knew it, but calling them out on being an idiot wouldn't solve anything, so I respectfully explained that the black racer they killed was no threat to them, or their dog. I also explained how to identify a venomous snake, which I guess is a more justifiable thing to kill because it actually could harm the dog if the dog gets too interested. Then I asked them not to kill anymore black racers.
I was met with hatred. Among the arguments I was given included explanations of how much more valuable a dogs life is than any other animals, how people don't have time to identify a snake and it's safer to just kill the thing, and my favorite, "You actually have snakes in your house on purpose?!?! What a creep!"
I don't know if these people are just that stupid, or if they're the KKK of animals and they just replaced "white race" with "dog", which I suppose would also make them stupid.
The point is, if you're one of the people who kills snakes because "all snakes are dangerous" you're an idiot.
On the other hand, now you know better, and to continue to kill snakes indiscriminately at this point would make you an even bigger idiot.
/endrant
You will most likely never make a dime breeding snakes.
You will probably never make a dime breeding snakes, and it pisses me off just as much as it does you.
Well everyone knows you have to feed the snakes, pay for the bills on all the electrical stuff used to keep them alive, and of course, give them water. If you've already figured out that if you sell these beautiful morphs for the same price you bought them for you can get rich. Awesome! You're good at math... But here's what you haven't factored in.
By the time your snake is breeding age, the value of its morph will have dropped an average of 75% if you're lucky. It will usually drop more. Every morph starts out with one snake. Some snake got birthed that was a wild abnormality, and breeders have to go through a pretty long (years) and complicated process to get that morph to reproduce. Once they've got it to reproduce they can pretty much name their price. I've seen as high as $100,000 per snake. In a couple of years there may be three or four people breeding that morph, and the prices will stay astronomically high, but will begin to lower. As time goes on, the rate the price drops increases speed.
The thing is, if you're looking for a career, you probably won't be able to get in on the $100,000 snakes, which can potentially make you money some time down the road as the rate of price drop is really slow in the beginning because so few people have access to the morph. You're probably going to get in on snakes that are currently going for $5000, if you're lucky. So by the time you're breeding the snakes, the prized morph you're gunning for is going to be worth $1,250, and then even less the year after that. It will slowly drop in price until it's worth about $100. If you want to look at a mature morph market, check out corn snakes. These morphs used to be thousands of dollars, now breeders are lucky to sell a morph for more than $100.
The bottom line is, unless you're already rich, you aren't going to make money off snake breeding, you will in fact lose money. Feeding the snake + buying the breeders is going to cost more than any money you'll ever make. I've tried every possible idea on how to make breeding a career, and the only one that pans out goes along the lines of, "First I need $500,000....". You get the point. So save yourself a lot of time and money, and don't breed unless you're just doing it for fun.
Well everyone knows you have to feed the snakes, pay for the bills on all the electrical stuff used to keep them alive, and of course, give them water. If you've already figured out that if you sell these beautiful morphs for the same price you bought them for you can get rich. Awesome! You're good at math... But here's what you haven't factored in.
By the time your snake is breeding age, the value of its morph will have dropped an average of 75% if you're lucky. It will usually drop more. Every morph starts out with one snake. Some snake got birthed that was a wild abnormality, and breeders have to go through a pretty long (years) and complicated process to get that morph to reproduce. Once they've got it to reproduce they can pretty much name their price. I've seen as high as $100,000 per snake. In a couple of years there may be three or four people breeding that morph, and the prices will stay astronomically high, but will begin to lower. As time goes on, the rate the price drops increases speed.
The thing is, if you're looking for a career, you probably won't be able to get in on the $100,000 snakes, which can potentially make you money some time down the road as the rate of price drop is really slow in the beginning because so few people have access to the morph. You're probably going to get in on snakes that are currently going for $5000, if you're lucky. So by the time you're breeding the snakes, the prized morph you're gunning for is going to be worth $1,250, and then even less the year after that. It will slowly drop in price until it's worth about $100. If you want to look at a mature morph market, check out corn snakes. These morphs used to be thousands of dollars, now breeders are lucky to sell a morph for more than $100.
The bottom line is, unless you're already rich, you aren't going to make money off snake breeding, you will in fact lose money. Feeding the snake + buying the breeders is going to cost more than any money you'll ever make. I've tried every possible idea on how to make breeding a career, and the only one that pans out goes along the lines of, "First I need $500,000....". You get the point. So save yourself a lot of time and money, and don't breed unless you're just doing it for fun.
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