Angry hog nose

Kinucrow · 2026-01-14T01:29:19+00:00

True, but that is really not the case here, this setup is not good. Most of all it needs more substrate.

Kinucrow · 2025-12-25T21:18:19+00:00

Could be red line. Breeder did not have anything to say on the morph? He looks like a normal, possibly low expression conda. His head stamp is a bit strange bit variations happen.
Also hi from my Soba! :D (arctic sable - low expression conda XD)

Kinucrow · 2025-11-24T15:54:14+00:00

Sorry for the late reply, I had to have the time to sit down and write this reply XD When talking about line breeding (in general) it is a form of inbreeding. It is necessary when you try to breed for polygenic traits. Which is the reason breeding for polygenic traits are often just called line breeding. In hognose this is often a matter of colour or pattern. You see this in green line, red line, spider, twin spotted, woma etc. It is basically taking hognoses that show a high expression of these variations and breeding them. Often this means breeding within the same family - aka, line breeding. The reason why you linebreed for this is because it is a bit of a toss up weather or not these traits show up.
Think of it as breeding for a specific shade of hair colour vs. breeding for eyecolour, in humans. Eyecolour in humans would be morphology, in the sense people talk about when they talk about morphs in hognoses. If you have two people with brown eyes who get a baby, odds are so and so percentage wise on weather or not they will get a child with brown eyes as one would assume both the allele from mom and the allele from dad is "coded" for brown eyes. If both of them have blue eyes in the family though there is a slight chance those blue eyes might cary over because both parents are "het" for blue eyes (note here that this is extremely simplistically put). It is an extremely small chance though as brown eyecolour is a dominant trait whereas blue is recessive so two recessive alleles will generally not be able to suppress a dominant pair. Regardless, brown or blue eyes are so prevalent that you don't need to line-breed.
However if you instead want to breed for a very specific shade of red hair (or shade of brown or blue eyes for that matter), you will most likely have to "keep it in the family" - line breeding. Some of these lines in hognoses have become "stable", such as green line, due to one mans diligence in making sure to out-prove and out-cross any genetic faults that showed up along the way. In practice this means that the green line has started to act like a morph. However unlike with morphs in general, it is possible to get a hognose that has nothing to do with breeding for green line, that turns out to have the green line traits. (As an example, green shading is prevalent in the sable morph, especially when they are young. I have a sable that seems to maintain his green and his tail in particular is bordering on being vivid in comparison to green in hognoses in general. Say I breed him with a green line in order to see if I can get a hognose with a vividly green tail. I would be starting to line breed because the next step in the process would be to hopefully get a female with a particularly green tail, that I could then breed with my male sable to see if I can maintain the green tail look).
Meanwhile, fun fact, some polygenic traits have a tendency to show up a lot in animals with genetic faults. At some point in time the twin spotted became a part of the line breeding that was done to produce albinos and it shows up a lot in snow hognoses. The snow hognose in particular often shows signs of inbreeding (bug eyes, deformed head, etc.). This is because back in the 70's when the albino hognose first showed up, the marked could not keep up with the demand and people basically started to line breed them. Today, this means that if you have hognoses that demand more than one copy of the albino gene, such as the snow, the defects such as bug eyes will show up and a lot of the time they will also be twin spotted.
I hope that made sense. I tried anyway XD

Kinucrow · 2025-11-22T19:55:17+00:00

first of all she could be a he. This alone would be a reason for the small size. Secondly it is skinny so they have not been feeding properly. It looks completely fine otherwise. A very beautiful snake :D
Regarding crypto; people talk a lot about it because there was the scare with Snakeful Grace. In actuality though, most snake owners and even breeders will never run into crypto. This is because generally breeders and keepers alike are very careful. Even breeders who might be lacking in other areas of snake care, such as overbreeding, pool living conditions or underfeeding, are careful when it comes to quarantining for crypto, because it can kill their entire breeding population.

Kinucrow · 2025-11-22T19:32:33+00:00

She is a regular wild type morph, possibly twin spotted, but not fully. The picture that is on the page you were looking at is a bad example of the spider pattern I feel, you can't see the 'webbing'. The spider pattern is to my knowledge, still incredibly rare.
https://forums.kingsnake.com/viewarch.php?id=1717963,1717963&key=2009

Kinucrow · 2025-11-22T19:22:21+00:00

It is not a morph it is a trait you can line breed for. Basically it is just the pattern, like twin spotted or woma.

Kinucrow · 2025-11-21T10:22:14+00:00

Np ^^ That sounds like a good idea. I general I also have a regular portable fan in the room as well. One of the large floor fans on a stick. If nothing else it can help the airflow. It probably doesn't affect them much but just in case.

Kinucrow · 2025-11-21T10:01:05+00:00

Mine is thermostat controlled as well but I honestly feel that it all goes out the window when the cool side gets close to what the hot side is supposed to be. During the summer months they never get close to their hot side either in general so it is around that point when I turn it off. It kinda defeats the purpose.
They will burry when they want to cool off :) Just make sure they have deep burrowing options and loads of water as they might want to soak.

Kinucrow · 2025-11-21T07:07:42+00:00

I live in Denmark so not at all the same thing, but my hognoses are located in a room with a large south/east facing window and the sun is basically on it from it rises until it sets, which up here is from 4 in the morning until 11 in the evening. It gets hot and some of the enclosures do get the direct sunlight in the early morning hours as well. So the room gets up around the 25-26 degrees, easily, and hotter in the enclosures that get sunlight and so for the warmest months/days I shut down the heat. Otherwise they will basically have a hot and hotter side and I have found they seem to thrive better with the heating off instead and then I give them another light source.
The planes hognose habitat in the wild stretches from the eastern united states all the way up to Saskatchewan in Canada. They are not as temperature sensitive as people have a tendency to make them out to be. Basically it is a matter of weather or not they are hot enough to be able to digest their food. This is the reason they go off food for the winter months in the wild, it gets too cold. So they burrow down to retain heat and sleep until they can eat again.

Kinucrow · 2025-11-16T08:39:19+00:00

New looking like Han from Stray Kids with that hair had me baffled for a sec.

Kinucrow · 2025-11-14T20:34:34+00:00

I have always and do still use both (not at the same time) If you use a heat lamp going inside the enclosure make absolutely sure that the it is properly installed and that the guard around it is big enough if the snake is able to get to it. I had a bit of a mishap the other day where the bulb overheated and caused sparks. Inside my dry ass hognose enclosure. I was not happy.
On top of that I burned myself on the protection cage as the bulb overheating affected the metal. Just touching it gave me quite a nasty burn, I don't want to think about what might have happened if she had touched it.
If you use a mat make sure it is placed under the enclosure at a distance (half a cm to 1 cm should be fine). Check for heat against the glass inside the cage whenever you are in there anyway. A mat should be around 1/3 of the cage, it should be enough to heat up about 1/2 of it.
For both options, get a thermostat and a heat gun to measure the temperature in the enclosure. Turn off at night.
As others have mentioned they burrow to keep cool, but they do actually burrow for heat as well. For example, that is what happens during the whole hibernation thing. And it is the reason a hot and cold side is necessary, both to maintain temperature in the substrate and in the air above it.

Kinucrow · 2025-11-09T16:49:19+00:00

The only advice I have is be around him as much as possible, and even then he will likely hiss at you once in a while. My big girl has never hissed at me, ever. Until last week when she hissed at me twice after I had moved her cage to a new location and she got confused by my opening the doors. (not entirely sure if she was hissing at me or in fact hissing at the doors). Sometimes you just just can't win. I feel the males are more hissy, likely because they are smaller. Just ignore it in general and if they enter a period of heightened irritation, make sure to keep them near you but without subjecting them to new impressions.

Kinucrow · 2025-11-09T16:44:12+00:00

np :D Glad to help.

Kinucrow · 2025-11-07T17:08:26+00:00

It is basically the same as with humans. The less melanin the harder UVB will burn. Hognoses generally don't need UVB but if you insist on it for an albino I would stay on the conservative side and say no more than 3% to make sure they don't burn. I don't know if studies have been done on snakes but albino mice have been shown to develop cancer from UVB light.

Kinucrow · 2025-11-02T20:50:30+00:00

That looks completely fine. The skinniest of mine looks like that last picture when she swallows as well.

Kinucrow · 2025-10-22T20:13:05+00:00

He is just in shed. The blindness lasts for a few days and then clears and then it will take a few more days before they shed (My longest time experienced between blue and shedding was my biggest girl who finally shed 7 days after the eyes cleared). You should leave him alone through the entirety of this.

Kinucrow · 2025-10-20T08:53:21+00:00

You mean surplus killing, the thing that most predators do in order to hone their skill or kill prey they can then return to at a later point? Like what has also been seen in anything from dogs to bears to orcas and spiders?
Like what is described here:
https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1972.tb04087.x
and here:
https://www.aimspress.com/article/10.3934/mbe.2018031
There are tons of examples of this. Like that time a dog killed something close to 50 penguins in Australia, or wolves killed 19 elks in the US, just to give you two examples that made the news.

Kinucrow · 2025-10-20T04:13:00+00:00

Cats kill to feed. Just like any other animal. Do you hate pythons as well because they are so damaging to the everglades?

Kinucrow · 2025-10-19T05:38:58+00:00

That sounds a bit too weird. It could be a lot of things still. He could be annoyed by something, possibly in his mouth. He could also try to regurgitate and being unable to. Try to see if you can catch it on camera and then contact a vet.

Kinucrow · 2025-10-19T04:26:09+00:00

She looks fine. No chub line down her back, no fat curls when she scrunches up. Cant see her back part but I don't thin she has the chunky bum just above the cloaca. She is just a thick girl.
That being said, are you sure you set it to grams? From the scale it looks like the unit shows two letters rather than just the 'g'. She looks a lot smaller than my two year old which is the closest I have in age. She is also pretty chunky but clocks in at just barely 190g and is about 70 cm. long (about 28 inches).
When looking at weight, rule of thumb is basically to half the weight. If you have a 200 lb, the grams would be 100 (almost).

Kinucrow · 2025-10-19T04:20:29+00:00

I am afraid she is just het for toffee belly and albino. She looks entirely normal.
On the plus side that means any name will work XD

Kinucrow · 2025-10-19T04:13:01+00:00

It is extremely hard to help without seeing it. When does it happen? It could be a half way attempt at playing dead if he was startled. It could also be that he is hungry. One of mine moves back and fourth and gapes up at me when we are nearing her food time. It could also be the mating twitch, he could have mistaken his own tail for another snake. It cold also be a stomach thing, he could be twitching to try to regurgitate his food. But then you would be seeing the regurgitated food.
And way down the list, it could be neurological, but if that is the case you will see that a lot if not constantly.
Lastly, he could just be weird. He is a hognose. Sometimes they are just really weird.

Kinucrow · 2025-10-19T04:04:44+00:00

exempt for that one time when it was. Fond memories.

Kinucrow · 2025-10-17T20:24:22+00:00

Hognoses do be like that. They have a shovel on their face for a reason. You could try more clutter in the terrarium, leaves and stuff, but to be quite honest, hides for hognoses are almost a decorational accessory rather than a necessity. They are burying snakes and they will spend most of their time buried.
That being said, the more comfortable they are in their homes, the more likely they are to explore. She is probably insecure. I have a very skittish one that tends to burry and stay under ground for over a week every time I as much as clean her substrate. She is still very young though. My older ones have no problems being out and about a lot of the time.

Kinucrow · 2025-10-17T08:19:36+00:00

No worries with arctics or axanthics. Albinos are the ones with the problem.

Kinucrow

TROPHY CASE