I’m Holly Friedland, program director of the Midatlantic Reptile Show, and this is how to care
for a corn snake. We’re gonna show you how to feed your corn snake. First of all you should
pick a prey item that is the appropriate size for your snake. And corn snakes eat rodents, that’s
their natural diet, and you just have to live with that, that’s what they’re gonna eat. It’s best to
use frozen thawed prey items for your snake, it’s better for their health and it avoids problems
where the food can bite the snake. With a baby snake, the food is not gonna hurt the snake, but as
the snake gets bigger and the food items get bigger, the mouse can actually injure the snake.
Some reptiles, you need to supplement their diet with vitamins and calcium powder, with corn
snakes you don’t have to do that, because a rodent is a whole food, and in that rodent they’re
getting calcium from the bones, they’re getting the blood and the organs, so they’re getting all
the vitamins and all the nutrients that they need. You can get mice on line thru various
companies that sell them, or, you can buy them at your local pet stores and many of them do
carry frozen and some also have live. When you feed your mouse, you should never put your
fingers in the tank because that’s a good way to get bitten. You should always use tongs or long
tweezers or something so that the snake’s not gonna hurt you. And you dangle the food in front
of them, and once they’re attracted by the movement and the scent, they’ll start to eat the animal.
And they will stretch out their jaws so that they can fit the whole animal in one bite. And it takes
a few minutes usually for them to eat it down. Normally you should hold the mouse by its back
end, because the snake likes to eat it head first. And that’s important especially as the food items
get bigger, because if they eat the food back end first the arms stick out and it’s a lot more
difficult for them to swallow. And sometimes they even spit it out and start over with the head.
Once they swallow the prey, they’ll start to move their body to move the food, once it’s inside
down into their stomach, and they do that by turning from side to side. Next, we’re gonna talk
about troubleshooting your corn snake problems.
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