Looking for an interesting and gentle addition to a terrarium? Or maybe you just wish there was a snake that didn't eat such expensive fare, such as mice and rats, yet would not have the temperament of the water snakes?

Either way, the rough-scaled green snake is a beautiful addition to any collection. The snake has an excellent disposition but should not be handled due to its nervousness and its fragile size and build.

The Rough-scaled green snakes usually reach lengths of 30 to 33 inches with the record length being 45 5/8 inches. The juveniles tend towards an olive drab color while the adults tend to a bright green dorsal with a yellow or white ventral surface. Both adults and juveniles tend to be extremely slim and lightly built animals.

The natural diet of the rough-scaled green snake is just about any soft-bodied and hairless bugs, such as moths, butterflies, crickets, grass-hoppers, some caterpillars and most garden spiders.

In captivity the animal does well on crickets, wax worms, and an occasional live mouse pinkie. The crickets should be fed a good commercial feed for 3 days before giving the crickets to the snake. The feed I recommend is Zieglers cricket chow, but any other brand should do just as well.

I also recommend dusting the crickets with calcium and vitamin supplements prior to introducing the crickets into the snakes cage. The supplements that I use are REPCAL for calcium and NEKTON-REP for vitamins.

The snake is arboreal and does best when given lots of stuff to climb on and hide in. Since it is arboreal, a heating lamp seems to work better than a cage surface heater such as a hotrock or an undertank heater.

The cage that I set up was a 20 gallon-high aquarium with a very tight fitting metal-framed lid. The lid must fit TIGHTLY as the slimness of the snake allows for an adult to escape using a hole no larger than 1/4 inch by 1/4 inch. For cage props I use 2 small hide boxes, one mounted low in the end away from the heat lamp, the other mounted high and close to the heat lamp, and a length of plastic ivy plant bent into an arch with the two ends in the front corners and the top of the arch against the back top rim of the aquarium. I finish the cage with a water bowl in the 'cool' end and a heat lamp mounted outside the cage over the opposite end.

I try to keep the temperature at 80 to 85 degrees fahrenheit with a relative humidity of 70 to 85 percent. I have always used a 14 to 10 hour photoperiod and found that the snakes seem to do quite well, THOUGH I HAVE NEVER TRIED TO BREED THEM.

I have incubated the eggs laid by a recently captured female and hatched 7 out of 10 eggs for a 70 percent hatching rate. I kept the eggs at 80 to 85 degrees fahrenheit and at 75 percent humidity. I wiped the eggs down twice to remove a green fungus from the eggs.

When cleaning the cage I have found that completely removing the animal from the cage and placing it in a temporary cage allows for a better, more thorough cleaning of the cage. I remove all internal props (water bowel included) and soak in a 10 percent bleach solution. I clean the aquarium with an ammonia based glass cleaner. I then scrub, rinse, and allow the cage props to completely dry before reassembling the cage. By the way, newspaper makes a good cheap substrate but spaghuam moss looks much better.

There is not much to keeping a green snake. Short, sweet, simple, and interesting to watch as they gracefully and daintily stalk the crickets on the ivy.

CARE SHEET

SUPERWORMS
DO NOT REFRIGERATE. Superworms can withstand heat up to 90 Degrees and will not change to pupae or beetles. The container should have a bedding of chicken mesh, wheat bran, corn meal or dry oatmeal. When bedding becomes sandy in appearance, add more. Moisture food such as a mall piece of raw potato, carrot or celery is essential.

MEALWORMS
Place in the refrigerator at 45 to 50 degrees. At this temperature, worms become dormant and last for months. It is better to keep fresh stock so try not to keep more than a two week supply.
When you are ready to feed mealworms, remove from refrigerator, let container sit for 30 min. and place moisture food such as raw carrot or potato in with mealworms. When they are finished feeding, remove any moisture food, replace lid and put back in refrigerator.

CRICKETS
For longer live keep crickets between 75 and 85 degrees. When crickets arrive, empty out entire contents into cricket container.
Place egg cartons on the wall of the container, add grain product, water bottle, ad a couple pieces of carrot or potato. To clean: Shake the crickets off of the egg cartons and remove from container, take out water bottle, Use putty knife and scrape sides and bottom of container towards the center of the container. The live crickets will jump from pile to the corners of the container. Remove debris from container, place egg cartons back in container, replace water with fresh water, replace carrot or potato.
DO NOT PLACE CRICKETS NEAR HEAT, CHEMICALS OR FLEA COLLARS.
Crickets that I use for my personal use are feed ORANGES 24 to 36 hours before they are feed to my collection. The reason is to get VIT.C in my reptiles.
The crickets will Drink the juice from the oranges.

Provided by Derrick Braun