Hognose Handling

[HtotheB]

I have a few questions regarding the behaviour of my hognose when handling it (which ive had since last june).

When I take him out he is very active and tries to escape. It looks as though handling him creates a lot of stress. He is very skittish and reacts rapidly to any moves I make. In addition to this, his tank is on my desk and he seems fairly skittish sometimes even when I walk by or look closely at the tank.

I try to handle him for a minute or two every couple days. Is his skittishness caused by too infrequent handling? I was wondering for those that have hogs on this forum, if you could perhaps describe to me the best method to try and calm him down a bit and get him used to me more. Also, what sort of things do you do when handling the snake? Do you just handle him or do you put him down etc etc

thanking in advance,

andrew

[Beardonicus]

Handling any snake can cause stress, even minute amounts of it. In my experience, baby Hognoses are a bit skittish but calm down fairly easily with gentle handling. Both of mine are very calm and do not seem to mind being handled that much. Just be very gentle and don't try to restrain the snake (unless its going to fall or get away, lol). As long as the snake is eating well, you can handle it fairly frequently. And don't forget that each snake is an individual and not every snake of the same species behaves the same.

[tdeppen]

mine are kinda skidish also. they normaly crap on me then calm down.

[sapphire_moon]

never had any thing like that. Try putting him in a low traffic area, and not handle him for a while.

Good luck.

[snakehunter]

I have mine 'maids, and i usually put that on my lap when i handle jus in case one FREAKS out, but only the female does this the male is a pretty cool guy, only hisses when i open the cage

[Lrptls]

my hog was like that for a long time. i got him in 02 when he was really tiny, now hes much bigger and has very slowly gotten use to me handling him. hes still jumpy but not like he was. just have patience.

[Auskan]

I don't know about Hoggies in particular, but I have quite a few corns and what I've found is that they are very skittish when they are tiny, but as they get bigger they calm down - perhaps they gain a little more confidence as their size increases. I would say it has to do with having been handled more by the time they are bigger but I'm not sure that's it as I recently (about a month ago) got 5 new corns at once from the same breeder. Two of them were tiny, about 10g each, and the other three are much bigger - around 30g. Presuming that the breeder didn't have time for a lot of handling of each individual hatchling, none of them had been handled very much, but I find that the little ones are very jumpy and hard to handle while the larger ones are more calm, and don't seem to mind being handled as much.

[HtotheB]

THanks for the replies! This is my first snake so I don't really have anything else to base his behaviour on, besides what I read online.