I say good choice that you have made there. A corn snake is something that you will never regret in getting. Such nice temperment, looks, and what the best thing about them is that they never bark.....(I just hate it when my dog barks.....)
Anyway back to your question.
What things you should look out in a healthy corn snake. (I am assuming that you are going to a pet shop or breeder to get this.) (Oh yeah a side note for you....getting it from a breeder is much cheaper and you'll get better and healthier snake)
What to look for:
1) Is the snake active? Good you'll want a snake that is active and very alert. Try waving your fingers in front of it and see if it sees you....(wave too much and it might bite...cause it doesn't know what you are doing....lol but it doesn't hurt at all)
2) Skin wrinkley? If so, then it's either dehydrated or not eating properly
3) Running/Musking Nose? You wont want that. It might have some baterial infection in it's mouth, mouth rot or something like that
4) Sound of wheezing (when breathing)? Not healthy! It might have a repitory infection
5) Mites? Of course not. You don't want your pet or yourself to have mites running around the house. (These you'll have to look carefully...some of these mites go under the snake's scales...and they are usally the size of this dot ( . ) So make sure that you look carefully.
6) Is the snake feeding? This you can ask the store or breeder to feed it infront of you to see if it eats. If the store/breeder says that it ate a few days ago, try and come back in a few days later and see if it eats by itself (as in not force fed)
7) Ask the store/breeder if there are any live guarentee and for how long. (this way you can bring the snake back and get your money back if there are any problems at all)
These are just some of the things that you can do and ask before purchasing the snake.
There is a book called "The Corn Snake Manual" by Bill and Kathy Love. This book is a must have kind of book. It has tons of information and tells you what you want to know about getting a healthy snake. It also has a lot of morphs for you to choose from and photos of the actual snake so that you can get a good idea of what the morph looks like. A highly recommanded book.
My little advice is to get a snake from a well known breeder, since this is cheaper and that you'll know that the snake is surely healthy. Also a lot of them have gurantees....
If you are in the US here is a little list of people that is very reliable and have tons of great looking snakes (not in any order):
1)
www.corn-utopia.com (Bill and Kathy Loves' site)
2)
www.gherps.com (Rob, worked with Bill and Kathy Love before)
3)
www.cornsnakes.net (Don Solderburg, nice variety of snakes, very nice guy and tons of great looking corn snakes)
4)
www.serpenco.com (Rich Zuchowski, the founder of this site and has made up various morphs in the corn snake world. Tons of great looking snakes and real quality snakes~~)
There are tons more in the US just go to
www.kingsnake.com and then go to the classifieds and under colorbrids, there will be much more corn snakes for sale
If you are in Canada (I only know a few...lol)
1)
www.cornsnake.ca (Victor Freeman)
2) I myself...LOL...but no web site yet....in the process of making one
or just go to
www.kingsnake.ca and also under classifieds and look for the snakes for sale.
Others....I really dont know where to get snakes from...LOL
Anyway hope this helped.
Good Luck and Happy Herping~
