#milk snakes

[omg-snakes]

do you have any care guides for milk snakes? my cousin impulse purchased a honduran milk snake at a local pet store a few weeks ago and is now surrendering it to me, i'm not familiar with milks but i want this poor guy to thrive once i have him :(

Hello friend!

I'm very sorry to say that I don't have much experience with milk snakes. They're not a species I've ever personally kept and I don't have a care guide for them.

Most pet stores lump pretty much all colubrids (corn, king, rat, milk, hognose, etc.) under the same general care guidelines so if you know how to care for a corn snake I'd say you're already at last 50-75% of the way there. Just do some reading of multiple sources to fill in the gaps for milk snake specifics. They do tend to be a bit more delicate and I've heard anecdotally that they're being overbred, which is resulting in reduced health outcomes in young snakes, so don't be too shocked if they're a little tricky to get thriving. I'm really glad that this little one is getting into a better situation.

I sincerely hope your cousin has learned a lesson about impulse-buying animals.

[feenyxblue]

Reasons tumblr should give me polls:

1. Poll everyone on their favorite snake

[william-snekspeare]

AMPHIBIAN MILK!!

[reptiles-and-rainbows]

Snakes at Tropicario, in Helsinki, Finland.

[noxcheshire]

I kept thinking of little baby man Phantom and the potential of Danny being an actual baby of the Infinite Realms. However, he’s more snake teenager than itty bitty Little Baby Man edition, cause I think it’d be so funny to just — imagine this teenage snake curled up in a summoning circle, obviously having been taking a nap and looking up with his big green, sleepy eyes and Constantine just stares and freaks because, “THATS A WHOLE ASS BABY, PUT IT BACK!”

But they can’t because apparently the summoning was more of a ‘knock knock I’m a babysitter’ and Danny’s ghost parent decided that this was the perfect time to have some time for themselves if Heroes were so willing to take care of Danny for a little while.

Another take — mainly in reference to a different post about Klarion actually just being a toddler of the infinite realms with no ideas on how to human and thinks him fighting with heroes is just a play date — zooms into the human realm where the heroes are and just goes, “Hey I’m dropping my baby sibling onto you guys cause my dad got mad last time Danny got hurt by the humans I hang with. So here you go, I’ll pick him up later.”

A teenage snake Danny is dropped into a hero’s arms where he mainly grumbles and then shifts to better take a nap. Klarion drops the baby essentials at them with no further explanations other then “here’s their favorite blanket, if they get fussy taco them; here’s the baby milk make sure it’s -200 F, they have an ice core, etc.” and then just DISAPPEARS after leaving what amounts to a month old infant in human heroes care.

[squarecloud73]

*I worship you Tumblr please don’t remove it

Let's take off the jealousy, erase the rotten beneath, so we can polish this story, so pretty and clean.

[thepie]

this has been sitting concerningly long untouched in my wips pile.. unfortunately I think this is as polished as it gets 💔💔💔

[vespidclan]

[MOON 21]

NEXT

super excited to get to this one! having kittens drink milk out of a flower drenched in milk until they’re fully weaned makes perfect sense I think

(psst if it hasn’t been established already, the humans at the farm care a lot for stray cats like with baby Fallen and her mom. the ‘flower milk’ is just kitten formula from a dish left outside by the twolegs that papa here decided to use with a flower)

(what I’m trying to say is—don’t give kittens regular milk!!!)

also babies :) i’ll add em to the allegiances laterrr

[herpsandbirds]

Western Milksnake (Lampropeltis gentilis), family Colubridae, Houston, TX, USA

Coral snake mimic.

This particular population is known as the Louisiana milk snake, which used to be considered a subspecies of milk snake, but is now just considered a population of the western milk snake.

Photograph by roadtripmonster 

[omg-snakes]

I was looking at Corn Snake stuff and I have a couple of ignorant questions (I have researched them before but it was a couple months ago and I have bad brain fog right now).

Are there subtypes of corn snakes? Like how there are different types of milk snakes?

And can corn snakes live in something prepared for a milk snake (without much adjustment)?

Sorry if this whole thing is weird I'm so tired and have so much brain fog

Hey friend!

No worries, your ask isn't weird at all and we're all tired. The Christmas noose begins to tighten on my soul around mid-November and I'm basically a shambling husk of misery and pain until December 26th. Anyway...

Milk snake taxonomic organization is a bit different than corn snakes, largely because of their geographic separation and how rat snakes as a whole are organized. We recognize the various milk snakes as subspecies of Lampropeltis triangulum, though some taxonomists say that some of them should be their own distinct species. Milk snake subspecies look vastly different, but all of them can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, which supports their taxonomic organization as subspecies.

Rat snakes in genus Pantherophis, on the other hand, also look vastly different and can also interbreed and produce fertile offspring but are organized as distinct species! Why? I don't know. Organization of the natural world as performed by humans is currently an imperfect science. We do the best we can.

So for corn snakes specifically (Pantherophis guttatus) we don't have subspecies, but we do have color morphs and what are known as "locality morphs." A locality morph is where snakes in a certain area have color and pattern expression that is selected to optimize fitness for that specific area. The most famous locality morph is Okeetee, which were found in the Okeetee Hunt Club of South Carolina. The Abbott's Okeetee is a selectively bred line of the original snakes caught at the Okeetee Hunt Club by Lee Abbott with a goal of increasing saddle border thickness and crispness.

There's also the Alabama locality morph, which are overall dark with gray and brown patterning; the Miami, which has a light gray background with high-contrast brick red saddles; the Keys, which is a very light orange/red that closely resembles a Hypo; and the Carolina, which looks like a standard Classic corn snake with brown/orange background coloration and brick red saddles. These probably could be split into subspecies if taxonomists were feeling very into it, but the current popularity of corn snake color morphs in captivity makes the effort kinda moot.

In regards to your enclosure question, corn snakes tend to be larger than milk snakes so I'm not confident that a corn snake could live in an enclosure set up for a milk snake, unless the enclosure were pretty large or your corn snake is young and you'd be upgrading as appropriate. In either case, you might want to add additional climbing opportunities as some corns like to be up high.

I would definitely say that an enclosure should always be fully cleaned and sterilized between inhabitants to prevent the spread of disease.

[louistrations]

Ophira partaking in some gentle exercise.

[felsicveins]

"Like what you see, Wilson?"

[reptiles-and-rainbows]

Snakes at Tropicario in Helsinki, Finland.

[frippp]

Snaknets!! There fully posable and can hold 3 things at once :D

Also what snake species and morphs should i make? I know a lot about hog morphs but im not that familiar with other species morphs! Next one im gonna do is a lavender hog bc ive got some wool thats perfect for it

[rainbowsnakes]

ShINy (in the sun)