Housing and care of the Western Hognose

The type of enclosure that you choose for your hognose could be anything from a plastic storage box with a heat mat to a custom built bioactive vivarium with UV lights, live plants and 'clean up crew' insects to take care of waste and shed skins. There are only a few essential things, the two most important being the heating and humidity - they will be covered in detail in their sections but in brief, the humidity should be around 30-40% Rh for an adult hognose, slightly more for hatchlings and the temperature gradient should ideally be 30-32°C dropping down to 25°C on the cool side.  

The enclosure size for hognose snakes can be a divisive issue; some hognose snakes, especially juveniles and hatchlings, can become stressed and stop eating in large, fully transparent or barren enclosures (this is quite understandable given that in the wild at this size, they would be an easy meal for many animals) and temporarily moving them into a smaller enclosure can reduce the stress levels enough for the snake to gain its appetite. This has led some to the conclusion that smaller enclosures are better. In my experience, while this is sometimes the case for specific individuals, on the whole, I find that an enclosure which is at least long/wide enough for the snake to be able to stretch out along its longest edge is best, especially as most hognose snakes are pretty active (there are exceptions of course). I have found that most youngsters do very well so long as there's plenty of clutter, hides on both the warm and cool side, a damp hide, fake plants and/or cork bark to allow the snake to move around the enclosure undercover. The deep substrate also helps, as these snakes are natural burrowers.  

Water should be in a sturdy bowl with a small surface area and placed on the cool side in an area with good ventilation, checked daily, topped up as needed and completely emptied, and cleaned thoroughly with a reptile safe disinfectant (F10 avian disinfectant is widely considered to be the best), rinsed and replaced on a weekly basis (some snakes like to poop in their water dish so with these it's even more important to keep a close eye on their water daily and disinfect the bowl thoroughly - I like using disposable 'deli cup' water bowls for these snakes that sit in a holder, I re-use the bowl with regular cleaning until it's contaminated and then it gets discarded and a fresh one used.) Tank décor that's non-porous, like caves and plastic hides, should also be disinfected before its first use if they get contaminated with food or poop and as part of a deep clean. Any tank décor that isn't able to be disinfected, such as cork bark, sticks, logs, leaf litter etc., can be sterilised by baking it in the oven on low heat - I use 140°C for 45-60 minutes; this heat will kill most pathogens, significantly reducing the risk to your snake.

Spot cleaning a couple of days after feeding is essential - even in bioactive enclosures, many illnesses are caused by bacteria, parasites and viruses, often carried by healthy snakes without causing disease. These microbes can be ingested via the faecal-oral route, and if your snake is living in an enclosure that hasn't been cleaned, they're at risk of re-ingesting these and increasing their numbers to a level where they could start to cause signs and symptoms of illness.  A good cleaning regime should incorporate spot cleaning as well as full/deep cleaning on a regular basis; I recommend a deep clean quarterly for adults and monthly for juveniles.

Hognose, like all reptiles, are "cold blooded" this means that the only way for them to control their body temperature is by moving to a different environment, they thermoregulate (thermo=heat regulate=control) in this way to maintain a body temperature that's adequate for their metabolic processes, the most important of these is digesting food. Western hognose have a vast range, and across some of this range they would experience widely variable temperatures over a relatively short period of time. This is a benefit for the keeper as it results in a relatively hardy snake that's resistant to temperature fluctuations so you don't need to panic if you get a power cut; reducing the fluctuations in temperature is definitely better for the health and well-being of the snake.  The general temperature range I aim for with subadult-adult hognoses is a hot spot of 31-33C warm side of 28-30C and cool side of 24-25C.  I keep hatchlings at 28-29C with no hot spot while they're in the walk in hatchery as this is heated to a constant temperature.

There are many different heat sources available to the keeper these days, which you choose will in some cases depend on the enclosure you have chosen - a shallow plastic tub may not be able to accommodate a ceramic heat bulb safely for example. Most heat sources are safe when powered through a good quality thermostat and protected with a guard if needed to prevent the snake touching hot surfaces - the only one to avoid completely is the 'heat rock' type as these are regularly associated with burns. Heat mats and heat cable are fine as long as they're situated correctly, they shouldn't have anything sat on them directly as this can lead to hot spots, overheating, burns and potentially fire. Overhead heat is the more natural way of providing heat, it's important to have a heat source that doesn't emit light if it's going to be used overnight as well (though if the house maintains a temperature of over 21C during the night then an overnight heat source isn't necessary as a small nighttime drop is fine) something like a ceramic heat emitter (CHE) or a radiant heat panel are good options, combined with a light source, either LED or UV is fine, there has been some discussion of UV being beneficial but I've not been able to find anything conclusive either way. 

A photoperiod is important, I house most of my breeding snakes in an enriched rack system, I tried using opaque tubs for some of the smaller snakes - these tubs are designed for hatchling ball pythons who many people have found will feed better in the dark environment, as hognose are burrowing snakes I thought this would work well for them too, I was wrong - almost all of the snakes that were housed in the tubs that let in very little light stopped eating over the course of two months. I switched to transparent tubs, and within a couple of weeks, all were eating again.

Here in the UK we're at a similar latitude to part of the natural range of the Hognose which means our seasonal daylight is a similar length to that which they would experience in the wild, I mimic this with lights that are synchronised with the sunrise and sunset for the adults and subadults. Hatchlings get a 12 hour photoperiod as I feed them later into the season after the adults have gone into brumation and the reduction in daylight is one of the contributing triggers leading to seasonal anorectic (food refusal) behaviour.

As the natural range of the hognose is so vast, they are tolerant of a wide range of humidity - it's thought that most animals in the hobby originally came from a relatively dry area and the generally accepted ideal humidity is 30%. Hognose will regulate their humidity in the same way as they regulate their heat - if they have the option of a humid hide - sphagnum moss is a good choice - they will make use of this when needed, some individuals have a preference for using their damp hide more than others. An appropriately sized plastic container with a hole cut or melted in the top (or bottom and then placed upside down) is what I've found to work best.

Humid hides should be checked daily for any sign of mould or other contamination (some snakes do like to poop in there) and thoroughly cleaned and refreshed with fresh moss when needed. 

Hognose in the wild naturally feed on lizards and their eggs, nestling birds and occasionally rodents.  The majority of these prey items are difficult to get hold of, have low or missing nutrients and/or are prohibitively expensive, because of this the best diet in captivity is frozen mice, they're widely available from pet stores and online stockists and are a good composition for hognose. Rats aren't recommended as a regular prey item due to the fact that only juvenile rats would be an appropriate size throughout the life of the hognose and these are higher in fat than adult animals.  

In terms of the size of rodent to feed, a good rule of thumb for subadult to adult snakes is 10-15% of the snakes bodyweight per feeding, as the snake reaches its adult size the % can be reduced down to a maintenance level around 10%

Check out the FAQ for my current snake weight/food weight chart. 

Frequency of feeding is something that depends on the age of the animal, the time of year and any physical or environmental factors such as breeding, regaining condition, brumating etc. for a pet animal that isn't breeding or brumating I would recommend initially feeding young snakes that are on pinkie mice every 3 days, the lack of fur and hard bones combined with the relatively fast metabolism of the hognose snake means you'll likely see the results from the last meal emerging after only 2 days or so. Once they move up to fuzzy mice and then hoppers I would increase the time between feeds to 4-5 days and then once they've moved up to small/medium increase again to 6-7 days and I would recommend maintaining this through to adulthood. Regular weighing of the snake is important as food strikes are a common behaviour especially in male hognoses but these are only a cause for concern if the snake also loses more than 10% of it's bodyweight during the strike. The only way to know this is to keep track of the weight, monitoring the weight also helps to inform decisions on when to increase the food size and gives an early warning of any illness as this will often be accompanied by weight loss and in some cases unexplained weight loss could be the only outward sign that the snake has something going on.