SnekLog is actually a pretty elaborate reptile tracking app. One might wonder why all that is necessary. After all, you feed your dog or cat every day, right? And clean up after it poops as normal? Why track that?
Well, because snakes have a slower metabolism, they only eat about once a week. And, it might sound easy enough to start feeding all snakes once a week, but what if one refuses to eat? What if one doesn’t eat so you use another snake as backup? What if they go into shed? What if you want to check and see who’s due to eat before you go on a vacation?
I didn’t like the idea of trying to force ourselves to feed all the snakes on the same day. We feed some every 7 days, some every 10. And, if they went into shed, their whole schedule would deviate from the others. I also might want to change the feeding interval after feeding a snake who was a backup feeder and has just gotten an extra meal. So, not all our snakes necessarily eat at the same time.
When you have multiple snakes, unless you are feeding them all on the same day, it can become difficult to track when each snake is due to eat. For me, after we had 5-6 snakes, it started getting difficult to track. Initially I used a giant wall calendar to mark when they ate (I still do this anyway for a few particular notes, because I like to look at it and have it as a backup). However, as that calendar became more and more crowded, it became difficult every day to go through the previous week and see who hadn’t eaten yet. Not only that, but I personally suffer from anxiety and particularly severe bouts of anxiety can interfere with my memory and my ability to keep track of everyday tasks. One day, I forgot to feed one of the snakes. Then some time passed, and it happened again. It was a terrible feeling. Since they don’t need to eat frequently like other animals, a one-time thing was a "forgivable offense"—no harm done—but it wasn’t “okay” with me.
There was more. I wanted to make sure our snakes were being handled regularly, with no snake going without socialization for more than two weeks. With all the feedings marked on the wall calendar, it just wasn’t practical to track that on the calendar at the same time. I needed to be able to see all the information.
Next, snake poo! What a strange thing to track. Still, some of our snakes wait a long time to poo, and if they go too long without doing it, it might be a sign of a problem. One time, our green tree python Jessie became impacted. She’d gotten a buildup of bacteria and just stopped going. If our snakes become irregular, I might want to intervene with a soak or supplement with lactulose.
Finally, medications. When you have one snake, it’s easy enough to say you’ll dose your animal once a year with a dewormer. But 25 snakes? Additionally, we sometimes had a sick snake come in that needed antibiotics. I couldn’t afford to forget or miss one of those doses.
So, we started looking at available reptile trackers. Many of them were expensive, and often they didn’t have all the features we were looking for. Certainly they didn’t have anything for logging socialization and handling. My husband had the basics of coding and started teaching himself Python. He made a web application I could use to start tracking all these things. Thus, SnekLog was born.
The name may seem a bit “cutesy,” but it’s easy to remember, cognizant of the fact that we love and enjoy our snakes, and didn’t require us to purchase the SnakeLog domain from someone for an exorbitant price. In the spirit of good reptile care, it’s a free web application. Maybe, when one of us has the time or wherewithal to learn phone app development, we can make it a phone application too.
I never wanted to have that feeling of helplessness again, not being able to keep track of everyone who was supposed to eat in one night. Now, I use it not only to log information for our snakes but also medications scheduled for our lizards and tortoise. I have notes in it that tell me when the last time was I changed out a UV bulb. I make medical and vet notes in it so I can check the last time Falafel damaged his tail.
In addition to the basic care stuff, SnekLog has other nifty things like being able to log a clutch of eggs and, when those eggs hatch, turn them into hatchlings (with birthdates and parents logged!). Pretty cool. I also like being able to go back and look at the pictures I’ve logged of our babies, and how they have changed over time. I have added pictures of some snakes we rehomed, because their new owners send me updated pictures sometimes. Seeing them grow is pretty awesome.
I am still not perfect, and I still make mistakes (I read “Sage” instead of “Juniper” and pulled the wrong food size out in spite of whatever the app told me to do), but I find that I make a lot fewer mistakes than I used to. Not only that, but I don’t have to look back on the wall calendar to 7-10 days ago to try and figure out when someone ate last.
If you haven’t checked out SnekLog, I definitely recommend it. The web app will be free for as long as we can afford to keep the servers open, because we think everyone should have the resources to do their best for their animals.