My First Snake!

[iona_gecko]

Well, today we went to the place we bought our first crestie and i had a look at the snakes.  Eventually settled on a yellow ratsnake, he's only around 8 weeks old so not big at all

i've never owned a snake but always wanted to.  he looks pretty dull in colour at the mo but i've googled some nice pics when they are adults.

he seems to have settled in not too bad, will have to see how his feeding goes on Monday.

Does anyone else have similar type of snake and can give any tips? I'm not familiar with handling etc so any tips on that would be good!

[justanotherfroginthepond]

Rat snakes are one of my favorites, my mostest favoritest being the taiwanese beauty.  As far as the handling, just do the hand-to-hand walk until he chills out a bit... they tame down very easily with regular handling.  Make sure to feed him appropriately sized meals (a pinkie or fuzzy that is about the same size around as they are) once a week until you can move up to adult mice, then rat pups and up.  As an adult you'll be feeding larger items less frequently, but you've got a ways 'til you get there! 

Have fun with it... they are pretty cool!  Where is our pic, by the way??   

[EmilyK]

Great choice - adult yellow rats are -really- pretty! How'd the first feeding go?

[monster]

a friend of mine has a young yellow rat as well. i've gotten the impression they aren't much different from other rat snake care. hers likes to climb 

[iona_gecko]

He had 2 pinkies last week and same again this week. He has settled really well we are babysitting boyfriend's sister's leo til it starts feeding properly so swapped the snake into leo's viv and put leo in critter keeper to keep a closer eye on him. Well, I went off to the stables and got a call after a few hours, snake has escaped! My boyfriend isn't into snakes at all he's a bit frightened of them so I hotfooted it back home and snake was under the dvd cabinet we moved it and when he saw me he just kind of gave up and let me pick him up.I gave him a telling off and put him back to bed and blocked where we think he escaped from. He had 2 pinkies again today but was looking around for more. When should I move him up to fluffs? I'd post a pic of him but my computer died and my phone doesn't have the option to load pics on to here. If anyone wants to have a look I have pics of the escape artist on facebook, just add me iona davies :-)
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