I’m Holly Friedland, program director of the Midatlantic Reptile Show, and this is how to take
care of corn snake. Now we’re gonna talk about how to handle your corn snake. The first 30
seconds that you reached into a tank are the most dangerous in dealing with snakes. Obviously,
this tank is inappropriate for this size snake, but we’re using it just for demonstration purposes.
When you reach in, you can use a hook to pick up your snake and you would just put the hook in
a loop of the snake and then pick up another spot on it to support it. That’s a safe way to pick
him up and usually, once you get them out of the cage, they realize that they’re not gonna get
something to it, so they’re not gonna try to strike at you. Snakes keen on two things, movement
and scent. So when you reach in to the tank, they see your hand moving and therefore its instinct
is to think about food. Another way that you can grab your snake is to flat hand it, and that is to
put your hand flat so the snake mouth doesn’t have anything to bite and then you can just reach
him and grab another part of the snake and pick him up. For the most part, corn snakes are really
docile snakes and handling them is not a problem. There are certain times that you should not
handle your snake, one, is after it’s eaten, because you may cause it to regurgitate its meal.
Another time is when it’s opaque and that’s when it’s getting ready to shed and the eyes will turn
kind of bluish in color and the pattern will be all faded, and you don’t wanna handle them then,
because they don’t see very well at that time. You also don’t wanna handle them if you’ve
handled their food, like a mouse or something, because they’ll smell the mouse on you and you
can get bitten that way. Next, we’ll gonna talk about feeding your snake.
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