The practice of feeding mice, etc.. to insectivores

Just curious to learn about this.

I raise leopard geckos, and it is a common practice to feed pinkies to adult females to fatten them up for breeding. This is far from natural and would never happen (in fact in nature the adult mice would probably have a nice snack had a leo invaded its nest).

Still, I have found myself looking for mice to breed to supply myself with some pinkies.

This led me to find pygmy mice. Adult Pygmy mice are comparable in size to normal pinkies (and the pygmy pinkies are about ant sized).

Now these would be quite interesting to use, I can imagine the pinkies being useful as yet another alternative food item even for feeding to juvinile leopard geckos. And the adult mice are small enough to be eaten by adult leopards, while being able to be gutloaded probably to a much greater degree than any common feeder insect.


BUT: to what extent can an insectivore digest meat, bone, and fur?

The main difference is the fat in mammals. Your leos would probably not have a problem with the bone, but the amount of fat can eventually cause problems. I would also avoid feeding them too much hair. Once in a while or for gravid females shouldn't be a problem, but I would not use mammal as a dietary base.

True, fatty liver disease would be a potential issue, but I'd be more worried about short term effects such as impaction from fur (i recall zoo fed gators are given shaved meat for this reason)