How to Heat a Hognose Snake Habitat

Video Transcript

"Now, of course you have to keep your Hognose Snake warm, they are a cold blooded animal. Mexican Hognose Snakes and Western Hognose Snakes live in more of a drier, arid area where it gets generally pretty much hotter than more temperate zones where you find Eastern Hognose Snakes. So, in the Mexican and Western Hognose Snakes you need a warm area of about eighty to eighty-five degrees, a little bit cooler over in the other areas of the tank. So you definitely want to create a warm spot and a cooler spot so the snake can thermal-regulate. You definitely don't want to get it too hot, then the snake will become inactive and not feed. Now, the way to heat the cage is that you can conveniently have a reptile room where you keep it a constant eighty to eighty-five degrees, or you can provide a heating tape or heating pad underneath the tank. If you use a heating pad or heating tape don't cover the entire bottom of the cage, only cover about a quarter of it so you can give some other areas of the tank where the snake can go in and thermal-regulate. If it gets to cool, it goes back onto the heated side. If the enclosure is large enough you can use a small basking lamp which can give you an area that stays about eighty-five degrees. Only do this in larger enclosures, because if you use a big heating lamp on an enclosure maybe of this size, it would heat the entire enclosure and not give the snake any cool spots to go down to."