What do small snakes eat? How to care for a snake at home. Description of a common snake

Surprisingly, common snake(lat. Natrix natrix) is rarely found in the collections of snake lovers. This is explained by the fact that, despite its prevalence in nature, the snake is capricious and demanding in terms of living conditions and feeding. You can’t just put this animal in a terrarium, stuff it with mice and hope that very soon the pet will grow and prosper. It requires a special approach, and in this article we will tell you how to create the best conditions for it.

Snakes are widespread throughout Europe (except for the subpolar and polar regions), as well as in southern regions Siberia and Far East. They live on the banks of bodies of water (streams, lakes, rivers), sometimes found in vegetable gardens, in basements, and less often within cities.

It is easy to understand what exactly is in front of you: it is distinguished from the same vipers by light spots (“ears”) of orange, white, yellow colors located on the sides of the head. The body is black, but there are specimens with brown and dark gray colors. The snake's belly is light, white, with an uneven dark stripe. Usually the length does not exceed a meter, but sometimes larger specimens are found. Males are smaller than females and have a slightly longer tail.

Already applies to non-venomous snakes. Once caught, it bites quite rarely, preferring to “flatten” its head and hiss like a viper. If the enemy is not afraid, he resorts to the following trick: he releases a few drops of a sharp-smelling, stinking liquid from the cloacal opening and hangs from his hands with a cord, pretending to be dead. If you catch a snake and place it in an apartment, at first it will put on such “performances”, but pretty soon it calms down, gets used to it and stops reacting so aggressively.

Cover the bottom of the terrarium with a layer of coconut substrate or gravel; paper is suitable as a temporary option. Under no circumstances should you use sand: small grains of sand inevitably stick to the food item when absorbing food and enter the gastrointestinal tract along with the food, which can lead to the death of the snake.

The next task is to equip the warm and cold corners. A thermal cord, lamp, and thermal mat are suitable for heating. In a warm corner, the temperature should be 30-32 degrees during the day and 20-22 degrees at night. A layer of damp sphagnum is also placed there, and on top of it is a shelter for the snake. Place another shelter (dry) in a cold corner. To keep the humidity level from falling, once a day warm water spray the terrarium, or use a humidifier, while making sure that the sphagnum moss in the warm corner is always moist. This way, your pet will not only have a place where he can warm up, but also a cool corner to relax. In addition to the above, in the center of the terrarium you can place driftwood, stones, branches, artificial plants, other decorations.

A UV lamp is suitable for illuminating the terrarium, but warm days you can pamper your “snake” with sunbathing. Turn off the lights at night because they sleep at night.

Another important element is a container of water, which should be placed in the dining room. The snake will drink from it, and in it it will bathe, float or lie down during molting (soak). Change the water in the container every day.

The process of feeding snakes often causes a lot of difficulties for beginners. Snakes do not eat standard food - mice - either alive or thawed. The diet of these snakes in nature includes frogs, toads, and fish, so you will have to work hard to get suitable food items for your pet. It is important to remember: the snake should be given a variety of food. In particular, it is unacceptable to feed the snake only fish, since the thiaminase enzyme contained in some types of fish can cause a lack of vitamins B, E, C and chlorine, which is responsible for the osmotic pressure of the blood. Fish food should be interspersed with feeding frogs and toads as often as possible. Please note: snakes only eat what moves; they may not even touch a stationary food object.

Snakes are fed 1-2 times a week, adults and large individuals - a little less often. Once a month, mineral supplements are added to the snake’s food (sprinkled on the food or injected directly into the food item). Sometimes they pour it into the drinking bowl mineral water.

An additional difficulty in keeping snakes is organizing hibernation. To do this, in the fall the lighting and heating time is reduced, bringing it from 12 to 4 hours. Snakes overwinter at a temperature of 10-12 degrees. The snake spends about 2 months in hibernation. Wintering improves the activity and vitality of the snake, and also promotes the reproduction of snakes.

As you can see, it is a rather problematic and troublesome snake to keep, and it will be quite difficult for a beginner to cope with its care. But if you manage to provide him comfortable conditions, then you will have a unique chance to observe in a terrarium for snakes an interesting and unusual pet, whose beauty and grace long years will delight you and your guests.

If you dream of a pet that is more unusual than cats, dogs and fish, which will surprise guests, do not rush to get exotic snakes or spiders. Think about such an ordinary inhabitant of our latitudes as the snake - he is as beautiful and interesting to watch as any other snake, but at the same time does not pose an immediate threat to the life and health of his owners.

The modern animal lover can easily find all the information on how to keep a snake at home on the Internet. In turn, a competent consultant in a specialized store will help organize this knowledge and compile full list necessary.

How to keep a snake at home and what you need for this

A common or aquatic snake can also feel quite comfortable in captivity. First of all, you need to choose and arrange a terrarium (long and spacious), which would have:

• constant access to water for bathing and drinking in the form of a large, stable reservoir;
• soil that retains moisture for a long time (peat, sand, etc.);
• a large stone, which will be needed during the molting period;
• wet moss, driftwood or other objects behind which it can hide;
• a heater covered with a protective plastic mesh to protect the snake’s skin from accidental burns.

Frogs, newts, toads, fish, mice can serve as food, and sometimes bloodworms, insects, and snails may be liked. The main difficulty is that snakes prefer live food, so you will have to move the offered food until the snake pays attention to it. It is rarely possible to train a pet to eat food that has already been killed and you should not count on it. However, snakes need to be fed no more than 3-4 times a week.

How does he behave at home?

Snakes are non-aggressive, if you don’t frighten them, they bite extremely rarely. The owners recognize them, get used to them, and can even be picked up (though only for the reason that it is warm around the person). The pet's mode of activity is as follows:

• active in daytime, sleeps at night;
• already sheds once a year at home, as in natural environment;
• The approach of the molting period can be determined by the characteristic clouding of the eyes and changes in behavior.

In the cold season, in a house with central heating you will need special shelter and maintaining a low temperature (which, like the light intensity, should be gradually reduced in advance) so that it can spend at least 2 months in a state of “hibernation.”

Care and safety rules

The home must have zones with different temperature conditions:

• a place for warming up (30-35°), where a special lamp is installed;
• a cool corner (about 22°) where the snake can hide and cool down.

In addition to feeding, the responsibilities of the owners include:

• regular cleaning and replacement of water in the “pool”;
• maintaining high level humidity (for this, soil and moss are sprayed).

Nimble snakes are distinguished by amazing tenacity and perseverance, if we're talking about about finding a loophole to escape. When ordering a terrarium, pay attention to the strength and quality of the mesh that will be used as a lid. In itself, this type of snake is safe for humans, but not everyone can immediately determine that in front of them is a harmless snake and not poisonous viper. It is better to exclude unexpected encounters by limiting the pet’s location to a terrarium.

Depending on how they are kept, snakes can live at home for quite a long time (up to 20 years). To create decent living conditions for your snake, it is recommended to order food, equipment and other supplies from specialized stores. You can save time and money by purchasing everything you need online, for example, in the online store "

The common snake is distributed almost throughout Europe, in North-West Africa, Western Asia to North-West Mongolia, south Eastern Siberia and areas of Northern China in the east and Southwestern Iran in the south. It lives in various wet biotopes - along river banks, meadows, reed thickets, and forests. The color is the same - the general color is from gray to black, characteristic feature There are yellow or white spots behind the head, however, in some individuals they may be absent. The common one is very popular among beginner terrarium keepers, and its maintenance is not difficult. He needs a horizontal type terrarium, quite spacious, since the snake is quite mobile, with a large reservoir and several shelters. It is advisable to use hygroscopic soil - sphagnum moss, peat, a mixture of gravel and earth. The lighting should be powerful enough. Daytime temperature is 24-26 C, night temperature is about 18 C. The main food is frogs, and it is often possible to train snakes to take not only live frogs, but also pre-killed frogs, which is especially important in winter time. Sometimes you can offer fish. To stimulate reproduction, snakes can be placed in an artificial winter hut for 2-3 months at 8-10C, which, however, is not necessary. You can get 2 or more clutches per year. Mating usually occurs in the spring, in April-May; after a few weeks, eggs are laid, up to 50 eggs. Incubation at 29C - 23-30 days. The young independently begin to feed on small frogs and live fish. Interestingly, snake clutches are extremely viable and can withstand short-term temperature changes from 10C to 55C.

Description and distribution

This harmless snake, well known to many Russians, reaches 120 (occasionally 150) cm in length. It has a dark, often black, coloration on the back and white spots on the belly. To understand that this snake is just an ordinary snake and should not be feared, you need to take a good look at the head. A characteristic feature its color is the presence of yellow or white temporal spots.

The range of the snake is very wide. It can be found throughout almost all of Europe, North-West Africa, Western Asia, the south of Eastern Siberia and the adjacent regions of Northern China.

Features of biology

It lives in places one way or another connected with water - along the banks of rivers, lakes, ponds, in floodplain meadows, in reed thickets, swamps, near mountain streams and springs. He swims and dives well, and indulges in this activity with pleasure. You may have seen a snake in nature more than once. And not only in the forest, but also in the immediate vicinity of your home - in the garden, in the basement, in the barn or in a haystack.

During the winter, these snakes hibernate. To do this, they crawl into rodent holes, under tree roots and other shelters. Snakes emerge from wintering from March to May, depending on latitudinal conditions.

In the wild, snakes feed on frogs, toads, fish, lizards, as well as small rodents, birds and insects. In July-August, the female lays from 6 to 35 eggs in heaps of rotten leaves or manure, in rodent burrows, in soil cracks and other shelters with high humidity. Egg incubation lasts approximately 60 days. Babies appear in late July - early September.

To distinguish a male from a female, you need to pay attention to the tail. In males it is long and with a characteristic thickening at the base, and in females it is short, without thickening.

Content Features

To keep these reptiles you need a terrarium no smaller than 100 50 60 cm in size. To make the snake feel good, install a heating lamp in one corner of the terrarium, and in the other make a ventilation hole covered with a strong mesh. The temperature in a warm corner during the day should be up to 30°C. It would be nice to put some kind of stone under the lamp so that the snake can warm up. At night the heating must be turned off.

To make the snake feel comfortable, place some kind of random-shaped shelter in the terrarium: a snag, a shelf, a piece of bark. Be sure to install a ditch with water in your home, where it can calmly swim and soak during the molting period. And also put a ditch with peat or sphagnum or use them as soil. After all, snakes always choose damp places for their place of residence, and peat and sphagnum retain moisture well. To better retain moisture, periodically spray the soil with a spray bottle.

Feeding

Snakes in captivity are fed mainly with live frogs and fish. It must be remembered that it is especially difficult to provide snakes with live food in winter if the snakes are not hibernated. We can only recommend keeping a solid supply of frogs in the refrigerator. You can feed the snake approximately once every three days, after the snake has digested the previous food. For variety, you can offer him mice, but, in general, they are reluctant to take such food.

So that you can drink fresh water, you should regularly change it in the artificial reservoir of the terrarium. Along with the feed, it is necessary to give various mineral supplements: crushed eggshells, calcium gluconate or calcium glycerophosphate. You can add mineral water (Borjomi) to the drinking bowl. Powdered vitamins can be offered with food no more than once a month. Once a month it is necessary to conduct a course of irradiation of the snake with ultraviolet radiation, using household appliances such as UV rays, from 1 to 5 minutes during the week from a distance of 50 cm. The substrate and skin of the animal must be dry. In summer you can take the snakes out into the sun.

Wintering

With constant feeding, especially for young snakes, wintering is not required. If snakes refuse to eat food during the winter season, or if you want to prepare it for reproduction, it is necessary to arrange wintering with strict adherence to following conditions. The snake should be placed in a light-proof, ventilated cage filled with sphagnum moss. The wintering temperature should be approximately 5-9°C. . Over the course of two weeks, you should gradually lower the temperature, making sure to first make sure that the snake has completely digested the food from the last feeding. When removing a snake from wintering, you need, on the contrary, to gradually increase the temperature. To maintain moisture, the soil in the cage must be sprayed periodically. Duration of wintering at in good condition the animal is about 2 months old.

After being removed from wintering, the snake is irradiated with ultraviolet light and fed, adding preparations containing vitamin “E” to the food. Then the males and females are placed next to each other.

Reproduction

Approximately 50-60 days after mating, the females lay eggs, for which a ditch with sphagnum should be prepared, where they will lay their eggs. The clutch is removed and, together with the cage, placed in an incubator at a temperature of 27-29°C. . After 50-60 days, the eggs hatch and begin to feed after the first molt.

We emphasize that in the conditions of a home terrarium all this is easier to describe than to do, since the risk of losing the snake when putting it away for the winter is too great. In general, it is much easier to keep tropical snakes at home, which do not hibernate in their homeland, than any reptiles of the temperate zone.

Water snake

The water snake is colored in olive or brownish tones with dark spots in a checkerboard pattern. Occasionally, completely black individuals are found. The belly is yellow or red, with black spots.

This one is more heat-loving and moisture-loving. It lives in Russia and Ukraine in the lower reaches of rivers flowing into the Caspian and Black Seas.

The main food in nature is small fish; it also eats tadpoles and frogs. Keeping a water snake in captivity is almost no different from keeping an ordinary snake. However, it requires that there be twice as much water in the aquaterrarium as there is land.

Snakes are snakes that can be kept at home, because... they are safe, non-poisonous and quite friendly. The size of the snakes is average, but this is still a fairly decent size (there are no exact sizes, all snakes are different). Snakes are common, water snakes, viper snakes and Colchis snakes. Many people are attracted to snakes not only by their safety, but also appearance. They have beautiful round pupils and upturned nostrils. The abdomen most often already has a spotted surface, and on the scales themselves you can easily make out its characteristic features. However, it is very important to know how to care for a snake at home, where to keep it, what to feed, how to care for it, and much more. Every owner or those wishing to own a snake should know about this. Therefore, now we will consider this aspect, although many people know a certain minimum about snakes (the need for water, fish for lunch, ingestion of food and much more).

Where will he live?

1. The terrarium should be large, because most of it will be occupied by the snake’s “pond”. Since life cannot be imagined without water, your terrarium must constantly have fresh water in the pool. It will be enough in the water for a long time, he will drink it and bathe in it (the latter means that the terrarium should be roomy enough for your pet!). Snakes smart creatures, they love to constantly escape from their terrariums, so do not forget to close the terrarium all the time, but not with a thick board or lid, but with a net, so that they can breathe easily.

2. As with fish, the situation with the snake’s terrarium should be like this: soil is carefully laid out on the bottom, which can be either simple sand or peat. The soil perfectly retains moisture in the terrarium, which is important. Regardless of your choice of soil, add sand to the bottom of the pool in the terrarium.

3. Snakes love to hide in moss, so make sure that in addition to the soil, the terrarium also contains moss. This way your pet will always be calm and comfortable (they are already burying themselves in the moss).

4. Such “inhabitants” as stones, branches, bark, “snags”, etc. should find their place in the terrarium. As you understand, with their help you can restore the natural elements in which snakes usually live. Your pet will dart between the decorations you create with great pleasure.

5. Hardest to Maintain different temperatures in a terrarium for a snake. The fact is that in one place the snake should bask, in another (also warm) there will be moss, but at least one corner must be dry and cool. In a warm place it will warm up (most often from a heating lamp specially installed in that corner), the temperature here should vary from 30 to 35 degrees Celsius. The cool corner should be dry at the same time and reach a temperature of approximately 22 degrees. On average, the temperature of the terrarium is about 24-26 degrees Celsius.

6. At night, the lights and heating of the terrarium can and should be turned off so that you can sleep in your “house”. However, humidity must be maintained regularly, so constantly spray the soil and moss with water and give them sunbathing.

Feeding the pet snake.

To properly care for your snake, you must first feed it. But what do snakes eat and how do they do it? Let's start with the fact that snakes do not chew their food, but simply swallow it whole and digest it. Snake food should be alive, as they say, the freshest. Most of all, snakes will like fish, but they will not refuse such delicacies as frogs or small rodents. You can find all the food for the snake in a pet store, here you can consult with the seller and independently select fish for the snake, small mice, frogs (buy simple tree frogs), worms, snails, etc. While keeping the snake at home, you will be able to understand that it likes most and what he doesn't like. Usually people ask how to care for a snake at home from sellers in a pet store, to which they are given the answer that snakes feed only on living and moving food. However, in fact, you can train a snake (or buy one already) to eat non-living “food”. Feeding of the snake occurs only a couple of times a week or even less often, depending on the size of your snake and its preferences (usually large snakes feed less often). We must not forget about feeding the snakes with useful minerals in the form of special feed (from the pet store) or crushed egg shells. Or add mineral water to the water once a month, which will be a pleasant surprise for him. Don’t forget to regularly change the water in the terrarium, he not only swims in it, but can also stay under water for quite a long time, and he also drinks water from his pool.

A common inhabitant of wet places, swamps and river banks in our country, it is found throughout almost the entire European part of Russia, as well as in the south of Siberia and the Far East.

Description of the snake

Animal already ordinary belongs to the genus of real snakes and has distinctive feature in the form of two “ears” on the head - spots of white, yellow or orange color. In some individuals, the spots are weak or absent. The coloring of snakes ranges from black to gray or brown with a lighter belly, the presence or absence of a pattern in the form of spots or stripes. Source:

The snake is diurnal, and its activity is subject to seasonal changes. Snakes are most active, including the breeding season, from April to September. In the morning they crawl out to warm up in the sun, and at night they cool down in shelters made of branches, under snags, leaves, etc. In winter, they hide in shelters and hibernate. Females are larger than males, snake length can reach 1.5 meters.

Like other snakes, grass snakes shed their skin. During normal molting, the skin comes off entirely. Before molting, it becomes more passive and refuses food. To ensure easy molting, you need to maintain a sufficient level of humidity.

Generally speaking, it’s hard to call a snake a pet, and considering that most of the snakes in the same poultry market are caught in wildlife, taking this snake home is not very advisable. After all, no matter how good the conditions of detention are, they cannot compare with natural environment a habitat. In addition, snakes are quite demanding in terms of temperature and humidity, so they often die in inexperienced hands. If you have no experience with snakes, it is better to release the snake into the wild.

Terrarium for snake

But if you have already decided, come what may get a snake at home, then for home care he needs a spacious, long terrarium, a significant part of which will be occupied by a swimming pool. A snake needs a pool for swimming and drinking, so choose a body of water that your pet can fit in completely.

The top of the terrarium is tightly closed with a net to prevent it from escaping. A soil that retains moisture well: peat or sand is placed at the bottom of the terrarium. You can also place sand at the bottom of the pool. Source:

In addition to the main soil, create an area of ​​damp moss in a warm corner in which your snake can burrow. They also place all kinds of snags, scatterings of stones between which the snake can crawl, shelters and shelters made of well-fixed branches or bark.

It is necessary to maintain a temperature difference in the terrarium. One corner should be warm for warming up. A heating lamp is placed near it, under which you can put a stone or driftwood, where the snake will heat its body. It is also better to place the area with wet moss in a warm corner. Daytime temperatures here should be 30-35º.

In addition to the warm corner, there should be a cool and dry place, preferably with a shelter, where it can cool down. In this place the temperature is about 22º. average temperature the rest of the terrarium fluctuates around 22-26º during the day. At night, the terrarium is not heated or lit, because... It is already active during the day and sleeps in a shelter at night. In addition to temperature, it is necessary to maintain humidity in the terrarium. To do this, the soil and moss are regularly sprayed. It is very good to purchase a special ultraviolet lamp, although summer period You can limit yourself to regular sunbathing.

Domestic snake and hibernation

In order for it to hibernate, in the fall the daylight hours are reduced for a month (gradually, from 12 to 4 hours) as well as the heating period. A decrease in temperature and lighting provokes hibernation, therefore, after a complete cessation of lighting and a decrease in temperature to 10º, it is able to spend about 2 months in hibernation, which has a beneficial effect on further activity and reproduction.

Feeding snakes

What do snakes eat? The snake's diet consists of live food. Snakes feed mainly on frogs and rodents, sometimes small fish. Food must move! At home you will have to buy grass tree frogs, small mice, aquarium fish and feed them alive. Also, some snakes eat insects, bloodworms, snails, and worms.