I'm going to be cooling my Russian Ratsnakes down in a month or so and want to do it properly tho I am a little confused about something. I keep mine at 25 degrees in the warm end and 21 in the cool end as their species is not the type to like excessive heat. I read that the ideal temperature for brumation for these guys is about 10 degrees. Thing is, I've read a lot on other species that says to cool them down at a certain temps for brumation. What I don't understand is do they mean the overall tank temperature should be 10 degrees (using my example) or 10 degrees in the warm end. If it's the overall temperature would I need to switch my mat off completely? as I don't think it goes down that low. Both Tatyana and Boris are perfectly healthy and a good weight so I've no concerns about actually putting them through the winter cooling, but I don't want fluctuating temps!

Any ideas from any experienced breeders out there?

I just put the whole tank in a cool area that is approximately the desired temperature. The whole tank is the same temperature.

When I first tried to figure out what temperature to brumate snakes at, I discovered that the deep ground temperature is the average year-round surface temperature. So I got an almanac with monthly average temperatures for various cities. I picked a city right in the middle of the species range and averaged the monthly temperatures for that city to approximate the average year-round temperature. The snakes would hibernate at the deep ground temperature or a few degrees colder. 10 C is a good approximation for most snakes found in the USA. But Russian rats might be better off a few degrees cooler.

By the way, you can't drop the temperature to hibernating temperatures overnight. They go through a hardening process in the wild as the temperatures cool off. The snakes have to have an empty gut, too.

For all things Ratsnake check out the Foundation The Ratsnake Foundation - Russian Ratsnake - Ratsnake Species > Asian Ratsnakes > Elaphe - Articles and if there anything you can't find let us know. Good advice by Paul on how to find the temperatures for a region by month/season. Just remember, underground, where they brumate, there's no severe cold or frost so the temperature is always a few degrees above the average air temperature.
Graham.

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Do snakes need light while hibernating? For example could you brumate them in a loft space with no windows?

hi i have just been given my two corn snakes by a friend of a friend that wasn't looking after them properly anyway do they need to hybernate and how and when (if they do)
thanks

snakes dont hibernate...

you dont have to cool snakes at all, i do it for breeding, the others i dont

thanks so much, now i know