How many per cage

[Snaky]

I have voted 2-3. I always hold couples together, but if I don't have a couple I put them seperatly.

I also think that when I have babies again, I'll put them together now in a big cage. I've hold them seperately till now, but I've heard that difficult feeders will feed more easily when they see others eat... Don't know if anybody else has experience with that?

[Cazador]

GarterGuy,
It might help your decision to consider that every snake in the same enclosure will have the same intestinal content (i.e. parasites, bacteria, & protozoa, & viruses) due to exposure to one another's feces no matter how diligently the enclosure is cleaned. For the record, I'd love to have an enclosure that is large and elaborate enough to house a bunch of snakes.

The more I read, the more I'm deciding that preventative treatment for pathogens is the way to go. If you treat all the snakes in one enclosure at the same time, and don't introduce untreated snakes, it will go a long way toward ensuring their health.

Snaky,
I've noticed instances when a picky eater gets stimulated when another snake starts eating. I've also noticed dominant individual intimidate others during feeding time and hogs the food. I guess it comes down to the behavior of individuals as to their reaction. For what it's worth, I've also noticed that one snake can be more dominant in it's own enclosure when another is introduced, but it can be subordinate when it's introduced into another snake's enclosure (sort of a home court advantage).

Thamnophis,
Why do you house T.s. tetrataenia differently? Do they behave differently in groups?

[Sid]

Woah, that's a lot of tanks. Do you all have specific snake rooms then?

ABCAT,

I have a room setup for nothing but my snakes. We never used our open carport. I enclosed and set it up. Still a work in progress, but worked out great (my wife is afraid of my pets).

Sid

[sschind]

I have a mother-in-law apartment on the back of my garage, has a decent sized living room, bathroom and kitchen (minus the stove, and the outlet for one....don't know what the prior owner's of the house were thinking when they built it....or a lot of other stuff) Work's great as my "Critter Room"

Your mother in law must love sharing a room with all those snakes. I suppose it might be one way to keep her from visiting though. I'll have to remember that trick.

As far as the poll, as others have said, a lot depends on the snakes, the size of the cage etc. I prefer to keep all my snakes separate. Occasionally I will need to double them up for space reasons. Just last night I had to put my Dumerils boas together because I need a cage to pair up a couple of Ball Pythons. It was a good thing though because within an hour they were all hooked up (the Dums not the Balls) I have kept several same sex corns, together for space reasons and display purposes in my store but that was when I had too many of them. As I said, my personal preference is to keep everything separate.