By: Julia Aidan
Submitted: 2009-03-22 13:18:53 | Word Count: 966
Pets are man's best friends as they understand you better than a human being and this is all due to well developed sixth sense that compensates for their lower speech or brain development compared to that which is found in humans. If you have decided to keep a pet at your home or in your garden, you will have a wide variety of animals to choose from as your pet. You can choose from animals such as birds or from insects to even reptiles, and if you are planning to have a pet snake, it will be a most thrilling experience you might have ever had in your life.
Before keeping a pet snake you need to ensure certain things to help it grow and live peacefully with you. First of all, think about an appropriate house for your pet snake so that it moves around freely and comfortably. The house is nothing but a cage where your favorite pet will curl up to live in happily.
[ advertisement ]
The cage should be well ventilated so that your pet snake doesn't smother itself and so that the temperatures can be maintained at the ideal setting. The cage should not only satisfy your snake but must also be easy and convenient fro you to clean it.
Snake house include a huge variety made from wood, plastic etc, you can also get large aquariums that works absolutely well for your pet snake. You will find a huge choice of them available to buy online, but do your research first to make sure you are buying a quality product for your pet snake, that will keep it safe and not harm it.
You also need to regularly clean the snake cage and change its bedding once in every seven or ten days. If you ignore this, the droppings pile up and lead to a situation called Dirty Cage Syndrome.
While washing the snake cage add some baking soda to the water which acts as a disinfectant and will reduce the awful smell due to droppings. Take care of other disinfectants used for cleaning the cage, as these may prove to be poisonous to your pet snake.
Streak the base of the snake cage with a newspaper or a torn aspen but never try to line it with sawdust or litter as they expel ammonia and don't dry up fast.
After deciding upon a perfect house for your pet snake, the next thing is to adjust the temperature in which your pet snake will live most contentedly. Usually the temperature of snakes' natural habitat is in between 25 -30 degree C, so its house should always be maintained at this temperature, because a colder or a warmer temperature leads to its discomfort and hence your pet will stop eating anything.
Always remember that nights are usually cool so maintain the temperature which suits it most, a temperature lower than 24 degree can cause serious problems for your pet snake. The cage should be help up at least nine inches from the ground.
Every snake has some unique aspects to its care and maintenance, so make sure you study up on the specific requirements for your pet snake breed. Not all snakes like the same temperatures for instance.
Lighting of the snake cage depends on the species of your pet snake; some species may need adequate amount of light where as others may not need any light as the ultraviolet rays from the light affect the health of the snake. Sunlight is actually sufficient for most of the species.
Snakes love to eat mice and rats and foods like plants and vegetables are just useless for them. You need to serve these rats and mice in their dead lifeless state as a live one may cause injury to your dear pet.
An adult snake needs to be fed just once in seven days, where as a younger one may need more food to help it grow. Frozen food can also be served but it should be thawed thoroughly before serving. These rodents are bred and frozen for you by pet supply stores and you can even order the meals for your pet snake online delivered to your door. You also need to feed them with extra vitamin supplements, females and baby snakes may not need but adult males do need an extra vitamin pill.
Some snake breeds will live happily on a diet of eggs, and you may prefer a pet snake with that kind of diet instead of having to provide it with a supply of dead rodents.
You also need to know that your pet snake will shed its skin every three months and this process takes just some minutes. You can help your pet to shed its skin completely by soaking it in water at its room temperature for an hour, if your pet doesn't shed it completely on its own.
A snake is very vulnerable at the time it is about to shed its skin, and it should be left alone in its nest, and certainly not have any live rodents in the cage to feed on at that time as the snake can be very easily injured while they are in that state.
Now that you have a thorough idea about how to take a good care of your pet snake, so don't wait, get its cage ready and buy one that suits your taste as you find a number of breeds in snakes too.
Author Resource:-The Ultimate Guide to Pet Snakes is from front to finish an easy to follow guide on every possible thing you would need to know on owning, breeding and caring for healthy snakes as pets. You can learn more about our pet snake book here: www.squidoo.com/pet-snakes-book
