Enclosures

Mountain kingsnakes have been sucessfully kept in a variety of enclosures. Rubbermaid sweater box rack systems seem to be most commonly used, due in part to their inexpensiveness and efficiency. Cages fashioned out of premium grade plywood or melamine board appear to be popular as well. Wherever possible, one should include in the cage plans a design for subterannean drawer habitats to accomidate for the semi-subterranean life style that mountain kingsnakes exhibit. Such a drawer should accesses the main compartment though the cage floor. For those inept at carpentry, molded plastic Herpetat enviroments provide just such an "underground" chamber; however, overall they seem uncomfortably small. Any combination of systems may be utilized as well. Often hatchlings will be kept in shoe boxes, sub-adults in sweater boxes, and adults in a custom constructed bank of cages.

Photo of some examples of the author's enclosures. Left: one of the Birch plywood racks the author constructed. Module holds four (4) 28 qt. Rubbermaid boxes. Right: a section of one of the many cages the author designed out of Douglas fir plywood. Note the barely visible hiding drawer underneath the window. On the wall: topographic map used to display locality data.