I really enjoyed build wooden terrariums lately, but I'm now looking for a new challenge.

I was thinking about drawing up a project regarding a semi-self sufficient terrarium for corn snakes. I was thinking about it lately, and I thought that the mai problem (excluding the cannibalistic behaviour common in corns) would have been the feeding system that would be needed to be mechanic and semi automatic. I was thinking of a simple mechanism based on weight, however the whole thing seems far fecthed.

I was wondering if any of you had any similar ideas, or read articles regarding such a thing, so that we could share ideas and maybe create something even at far distances. I remind you, that it still is a rather far feteched idea. But thinking about it all my ideas are far fetched but about half of them at the end work out.

So I'm up for suggestions

Intriguing idea however I see 2 main problems regarding the automatic feeding since the snake is a rodent eater and there is no dry prepared food that you could use.. .

1. If you are feeding live, getting the rodent into the cage without dumping a pile of urine and excrement soaked bedding into the cage? And you should never leave a live rodent in with a snake unattended.

2 If you are feeding frozen how do you keep the prey frozen up to feeding time and then warm it thoroughly before feeding it?

Also Corns are really not much of a problem with cannibalism if they are properly fed. You may be thinking of Kingsnakes which are dedicated snake eaters.

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Merlin,
What's Life Without A Little Magic!

I'm glad someone answered.

In response to your points:

1) The problem is not the excrements and the urine, since I'm trying to make it so that at the mice are led to exit their section by their own through doors that are revealed when the preset load is exceeded. For example a group of 6 mice are equal to a load of X, X is a measurement of mass in grams. Once the mice reproduce X is exceeded, the platform in which the mice live and breed is lowered exposing a door in which a mouse can travel. I'm not thinking of actually bringing the mice directly through to the snake, but to a second container which can be monitored by a person/timer.

However after a few attempts this thing is getting harder and harder. The real problem is that I cannot allow more than one mouse to escape the 2° department.

2) The mice will be obviously alive.

3) Corns can be cannibalistic. I've seen a case where the corns just wont have their own share of mice but will overfeed, which leads to having one snake to being rather hungry and competitive for the food, that has led to one of the corns being cannibalistic. One survived as they caught it in time, the 'prey' snake died before the owner found out about it.

I'm starting to abondon the idea. This is getting too technical..

If I understand you correctly you are referring to both snakes taking the same mouse and as they both swallow and meet in the middle one inadvertantly swallows the other. That is the reason you only feed snakes seperately. I thought you were referring to corns actually hunting other snakes.

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Merlin,
What's Life Without A Little Magic!

It's an ambitious project...although I'm not sure why it would have to be automatic if a person has to be there to monitor the live feeder/snake interaction. (Besides I always keep clear records on the amount of rats and their weights that my snake eats each time.)
However,I had another idea a while ago along a similar line... I was thinking of creating a passage tube (remember those Habitrail houses for hamsters?) to a feeding box. This way I could put the F/T rat into a feeding box and let my snake find it, eat it and return to her terrarium on her own... could be useful for people with REALLY huge snakes. The feeding box would be removable (obviously contain no substrate), and the passage would be able to be closed off so that the feeding box could be sterilized each time. The tube would have to be big enough for the snake to pass back through with a full belly. I'd want a passage to rub off any substrate sticking to the snake... and to give him/her a bit of exercise instead of just dropping food in front of his/her nose!)
The reason behind my idea was the smell of the defrosting food. It takes about an hour to defrost all the rats I need for feeding, I'm sure Talyn starts to smell them long before they're ready (even though I defrost them in another room). Then I have to move her to the feeding box and the rats to her or vice-versa and afterwards make sure that I've gotten all the rat smell off of me(possible?), before reaching in to move her back to her terrarium.
I haven't gotten a feeding bite yet, but I've heard about them (see Aosoth's thread "Heres some pictures for all of you new/future burm owners." under Herp Awareness if you need an example!!)

I think there's a workable idea in here somewhere...

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Andrea