Finding The Perfect Pet Supplies

Considering Adding Corn Snakes To Your Pet Store? You Might Need A Whole New Store--Here's Why

9 August 2016 by Victor James

Corn snakes, those docile little snakes that you frequently see snake lovers and herpetologists handling, are fast becoming very popular pets. It is no wonder then that so many pet stores have decided to stock them. If you own a pet store and are thinking about adding corn snakes to your line-up of available pets to own, you may need an entirely new store just for the corn snakes. Here is why.

Corn Snakes Are as Unique as Human Fingerprints

The most common of all corn snakes are the ones that are deep orange with red markings and are often confused for copperhead rattlesnakes. However, there are dozens of pattern variations, colors and markings to set these snakes apart from their more toxic and dangerous cousins. In fact, corn snakes can be as individual in color, pattern and appearance as human fingerprints! To stock more than one color, one pattern, or one type of marking means you could easily have several different tanks dedicated to just corn snakes.

Corn Snakes Also Have Their Mutants

Imagine owning a store dedicated to corn snakes for sale and having several tanks set aside for mutants. In these tanks you could place (and sell!) albino corn snakes, "scaleless" corn snakes (which have far fewer scales than their normal brothers and sisters), and even two-headed corn snakes. The mutants are of special interest to snake handlers and collectors, and are often even more valuable and profitable than the standard orange corn snakes.

Corn Snakes Breed Rapidly

If you are not careful and you have a male or female snake escape into the next tank over, you may have several more corn snakes than you bargained for. This typically happens at night when the snakes are left alone in the store and the temperature in the store has dropped sufficiently over the last few days to jump-start the snake's natural breeding cycle. This is one of the biggest reasons why most other pet stores make sure that their snakes are properly sexed and that males and females are kept separate.

If you do end up with several more corn snakes, you will know in advance by the dozen or so opaque white, oval-shaped eggs in a tank. Then you will need a separate tank for each of the babies until you can properly sex them. Otherwise you may end up with a corn snake population boom that you may not be able to get ahead of. 

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