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Corn Snakes
The Corn Snakes
The Corn Snake (Elaphe guttata) sometimes are also called Red Rat Snake. The corn snake is a North American species of rat snake. The called Corn Snake, because they have a maize-like pattern on their bellies that resembles corn.
The corn snake make an excellent and popular pet snakes because they relatively docile, reluctance to bit, moderate size, attractive pattern and easy to handle and care for. Their average natural life span about 20 – 25 years, and like all rat snake, Corn Snakes are non venomous.
There are two subspecies of Corn Snakes:
Common Corn Snake: brownish orange skin with orange or red saddles. Black borders on the saddle, and usually a black and white under belly.
Great Plains Rat Snakes: also called Emory's Rat Snake (Elaphe guttata emoryi)
Wild Corn Snakes lives in habitats such as overgrown fields, forest openings, trees and abandoned buildings and farms, about 6,000 feet above sea level. In the colder regions, corn snakes hibernate during winter. In the more temperate climate along the coast they shelter in rock gaps and logs during cold weather and come out on warm days to soak up the heat of the sun.
Corn Snakes eat rodents, mostly mice or rats. They are expert in climbing and may scale trees in search of birds and bats. Many neonate Corn snakes are known to eat small lizards or anoles as their first meal, as infant mice are difficult to find in nature.
Pet Corn Snakes are usually fed of commercially available rodents, mostly mice. Frozen mice are recommended, as live prey can carry disease or injure the snake if it has not been raised on live prey.
Corn snakes usually breed shortly after the winter cooling. The male courts the female primarily with tactile and chemical cues. The male insert its hemipenes into the female and ejaculates his sperm. If the female was ovulating, the eggs will be fertilized, and she will begin sequesting nutrients into the eggs, than secreting the shell. Egg-laying occurs slightly more than a month after mating, and deposited into warm, moist and hidden location.
Approximately ten weeks after laying, the young corn snakes use a specialized scale called an egg tooth to slice slits in the egg shell, from which they emerge.
