• In case most of you have not noticed, I made changes to the donation amounts as well as the durations for all of the paid membership levels. Things are winding down here, and this seems to be the most prudent way to deal with the "end of life" period of this site.

    Contributor level members - $10 per 30 days
    Sponsors - Eliminated
    Benefactor level members - $25 per 30 days
    Endowment level members - $50 per 30 days

    Account Upgrades Page
  • Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

Snake Owners, Feeding Methods

Feeding Methods

  • Total voters
    37
Mooing Tricycle

Mooing Tricycle

Misanthrope / Childfree
Joined
Jun 21, 2005
Messages
6,156
Reaction score
140
Points
0
Age
41
Location
Great Barrington, Massachusetts
Simple, No debate

What do you feed your snakes? Do you feed a combination of all of these methods, or do you primarily feed a specific way.

I dont care why you do(everyone has their reasons), im just interested in what methods you guys use during feeding time!

I looked around and didnt personally find a poll about this already( there still might be!), and i wanted to create one that was non confrontational, because it is such a hot topic, but it IS something thats pretty interesting to know. I think numbers are always good to look at.

So, Have at it.
  • Live
  • F/T
  • Prekilled
  • Stunned
  • Other

What do you feed?
 
I feed live to my Balls and Freshly Whacked to my Boas.
 
F/T to 99% of the collection.
Live to a couple BPs and maybe 3 boas that like to switch between f/t & live.
Finally getting 1 of the live eating BPs over to P/K ( its a start to F/t WOOT ).
 
It varies depending on individual snake preferences and size/temperament of the feeder (rodent). Larger, more agressive feeders are almost always offered F/T or prekilled. Smaller/juvenile feeders are usually offered live where needed, as they represent less risk of injury for the reptile.

Regards. :)
 
I chose "Other" because no one else did. I use roadkill (you know the stuff that has been cooking for a while).

Funny story. When I was in Idaho, there was a skunk that was killed on the road and sat in the center of the road for 6 months!!! It went through the entire winter, covered in fresh snow, packed, and slush. After the weather started to warm up it was finally gone.
 
Junkyard said:
I chose "Other" because no one else did. I use roadkill (you know the stuff that has been cooking for a while).

Funny story. When I was in Idaho, there was a skunk that was killed on the road and sat in the center of the road for 6 months!!! It went through the entire winter, covered in fresh snow, packed, and slush. After the weather started to warm up it was finally gone.
Click to expand...


yeah, i figured, there might be some out there that tried other things, like... those weird snake sausage things....

Roadkill is different though/ interesting too ( you are serious right? just figured i would ask :)), are you ever worried about rabies and such?
 
About fifteen or so years ago I was bringing my 8 year old daughter to school and saw a gray squirrel get tagged in front of me. Without thinking much about it I jumped out, wrapped it in newspaper and threw it in the car. My daughter just about died. From then on every time I saw road kill I would pretend to be pulling over as a joke.
 
Alicia...I'm pretty sure Michael was joking. ;)

I feed a variety of just about everything, depending on the snake I'm feeding.

One of my friends from work called me one morning, it was a terribly foggy day, and I was working late...he had driven by my place on the way home, and hit one of my young turkeys (the dumb bird was standing in the middle of the road). He felt terrible, but said he stopped and put him up into the yard in case I wanted him.....we had fresh turkey dinner that night, lol. Other than that, I tend to shy away from eating roadkill. :rofl:
 
Cat_72 said:
Alicia...I'm pretty sure Michael was joking. ;)

I feed a variety of just about everything, depending on the snake I'm feeding.

One of my friends from work called me one morning, it was a terribly foggy day, and I was working late...he had driven by my place on the way home, and hit one of my young turkeys (the dumb bird was standing in the middle of the road). He felt terrible, but said he stopped and put him up into the yard in case I wanted him.....we had fresh turkey dinner that night, lol. Other than that, I tend to shy away from eating roadkill. :rofl:
Click to expand...


LOL I think youre right!!!!

I wouldnt have been too surprised though, and honestly thinking back i think i might have heard of it before, Along with cats and.. well just about everything else save for human babies i think... :eek:

So i figured i might ask!!! Better safe than sorry! :dgrin:

Turkey dinner though, roadkill or not, i bet it was delicious! hahaha Now im hungry....... :(
 
Mooing Tricycle said:
Turkey dinner though, roadkill or not, i bet it was delicious! hahaha Now im hungry.......
Click to expand...

Sorry, lol. But well...it WAS delicious. :dgrin:

And thinking back, I do believe you're right, I think there was a discussion on here some time ago where someone said that they did feed some of their big burms or retics or something roadkill....
 
I was joking about the roadkill, but I seriously have used the snake sausages before :rofl: the stuff was what i needed at he time.
 
A friend of mine used to feed roadkill snakes to a snake that wouldn't feed on anything else. He refused to feed his snake live snakes or lizards (he didn't feel good about it). So what he used to do was to freeze the roadkill for a few days to kill internal parasites (regardless of if he was going to feed them them right away), then thaw and feed. It worked for him and never had a problem.

Regards :)
 
I keep ball pythons, breed my own rats, and have never fed anything but live. In over 3000 live prey being fed off, I've never had an issue, but I also don't feed larger than what I call small/small rats (4-5 week old rats) and feed 2 a week to my largest females, and still have healthy growth on them.

For my collection, smaller weekly meals have resulted in steady growth, with no winter fasts.
 
One thing to remember is that baby and juvenile rodents have less total nutrients/energy content on an equal fresh weight basis than adults. This is due to the fact that young animals have more water and less fat in their body than adult animals. A similar weight of adult mice will thus have more dry matter (and thus nutrients) than a similar weight of baby rats. Fat deposition in mammals occur as they mature (except for the brown fat in neonates, which is of little nutritional significance).

Regards. :)
 
Fat deposition in mammals occur as they mature
Click to expand...

I lot of us can attest to that Dan. :D

The problem is that it takes so long to grow mice up to the size of a pup rat.
 
kmurphy said:
I lot of us can attest to that Dan. :D

The problem is that it takes so long to grow mice up to the size of a pup rat.
Click to expand...

You know Kevin...I was about to mention that :yesnod:

Regards
 
Well, I don't have much money. You know those ads in the newspaper classifieds? You know, 'free to good home' ads? Well, like I said, I don't have much money.....
 
Back
Top