Feathery regurgitation anyone?

[Helenthereef]

Anyone out there feeding birds to snakes?

I feed week-old chicks to my Fiji boas (Candoia bibroni bibroni), and have just witnessed one of them regurgitating a pellet of feathers and tiny bones. I have always found these pellets but had presumed they were deposited (ahem) from the other end. I've only just woken up to the fact that they are regurgitated and not faeces.

I know not many of you feed your snakes with birds, but does anyone have any experience with this? My snakes are healthy and have been doing this for years, and as far as I know they all do it, it's just that I saw it actually happening for the first time this week.

Pics below are three of my snakes eating their chicks, and one of a regurgitated feather pellet. These guys think they are owls!

Any experiences or comments welcome.

 

[XxBLUExX]

That's really neat!
I've never even heard about this before,
I just feed my snakes the usual old gourmet rodent and well, I'm sure you know where thats deposited from lol.
Thanks for sharing!


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[XxBLUExX]

Beautiful owlish boas btw! ^_^


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[Helenthereef]

Thanks - these Fiji Boas are mostly arboreal, and birds are definitely part of their normal diet in the wild.

Apparently many boas like birds, but rodents have more meat on them and so will grow your snake faster. We don't have pet stores here that stock rodents, so I get the male chicks from the chicken farms when they hatch, (they only want the laying females) rear them for a week, and off we go.

I have heard that many boa owners avoid giving their snakes birds because they like them so much it's hard to get them back onto mice etc. I've heard chicks described as "snake crack", and mine do seem pretty eager for their fixes!

 

[XxBLUExX]

xD snake crack.
Well, I'd sure take chicken over a rat!
Lol
Cool thread, love learning new things :3


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[Helenthereef]

I've had these snakes over 7 years and only just found this regurgitation thing out - so there are ALWAYS new things to learn!

 

[XxBLUExX]

Definitely!


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[AbsoluteApril]

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing this, I had no idea they would do that. I've never fed my boas birds, mostly for lack of availability and the reason I always heard not to do it was because they leave really stinky nasty poops. Anyways, it reminds me of the egg eating snakes, they regurgitate the shells after swallowing the eggs. Neat stuff!

 

[Helenthereef]

the reason I always heard not to do it was because they leave really stinky nasty poops.

'Tis true that if you use day old chicks the poop is VILE - they are mostly still egg yolk I guess

If you feed the chicks up for a week it's much better, but I also supplement with adult chicken wing portions to add a bit more solid muscle and skin to the mix, and so now the poop seems equivalent to what you'd get with rats or mice.

What a lovely topic this is.....

 

[Snake-Queen]

Helen, do they regurge the bigger bones as well?

I got a python that had been fed whole chickens, the feathers came out with the feces.

The smell was so horrible, that I have been very reluctant to feed chicken to any of my boas.

 

[cguarino30]

I have seen these coming out the other end, for sure. So, it may be both. I've noticed they are predominately wing feathers, and tend to happen a lot more during the winter months when temperatures drop a little. If you up your temps and/or clip off the wings (which I don't imagine have much nutritional value anyway) you might eliminate the issue. I usually remove wings if I feel a food item is on the larger side of acceptable, as I've noticed that this tends to coincide with larger prey items. That said, I don't know that you necessarily need to do anything about it. Like you said, it's been happening for years, so it is in all likelihood a natural part of the process.

 

[C.Cannon]

That is strange. I've fed live chickens to my bredli before and they have never spit up a pellet. No feathers in the poop but the smell was terrible

 

[Big Borg Reptiles]

Ah yes, it's reading topics like this that make me happy I deal with terrestrial snakes

 

[Mech]

I used to feed my Argos monitor birds as a part of his diet.
Never any issues did that for several years before I traded her off.
No regurgs that I can remember.
Pretty cool about the snake though.

 

[Helenthereef]

Sorry I've been late responding to the replies (thanks all for the input ) - I was away for a few days.

Re some of the points made:

Melissa - I have had larger bones appear whole in pellets - when I feed them chicken wing portions I've started cutting off the small "drumstick" as that bone in particular seemed to get returned in its entirety, whereas the smaller bones of the wing "hand" and "forearm " seem to get digested just fine.

Chris - The chicks I use are 1 - 2 weeks old, so are mostly down-covered, which seems to digest OK. Their flight feathers start to come in at about 5 days, as in the pic below - by 2 weeks they still only have feathers in these areas, just longer. Maybe I'll start just plucking those wing feathers out before I feed them.

Also I have found feathers mixed with faeces, but the feathers seemed relatively clean, so I am not sure if they were excreted with the faeces, or just mixed up after the fact by messy crawling around....

In the wild these guys seem to often feed on Mynah birds, can't imagine the mess that would be made by eating a mature bird covered with feathers.....