A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

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Don Becker
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A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by Don Becker »

I was going to post this in the herpetoculture section, but since not everyone reads that, and this is a good reminder for everyone, I am posting it here.

This was just posted on reddit.com. This is the reason you should NOT feed your snakes live food.
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John Martin
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by John Martin »

That is literally frigging turning my stomach. Yeah, the reminder is good, but people should just know better! Well, perhaps not... When I was really young I did pretty much the same thing with an Ohio Black Racer :( :oops: Fortunately that snake only lost the last inch of its tail.
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Joshua Jones
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by Joshua Jones »

We had one do that to a Sonoran whipsnake some years back. Took the last foot or so of his body all the way down to the bone. While I certainly won't need any reminders any time soon, this is a good photo to post, Don. I wish I'd taken photos of ours. People need to see stuff like this before assuming that live prey is somehow a better or more natural food source. I can't tell you how many times I've seen that viewpoint argued online....
troy hibbitts
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by troy hibbitts »

although I feed virtually everything frozen/thawed, this really is a situation that depends on the snake and the keeper. You could add the caveat that if you're going to feed live, to never leave the potential prey item in with the snake unmonitored (this situation could have been prevented by removing the rat from the cage after the snake showed no interest in it in the first hour).

A legit case can also be made for feeding live to some venomous snakes - envenomation by hemolytic venom proteins speeds digestion. I don't do so with my venomous, but I've considered it. Of course, I hate the smell of mouse urine and feces, so never have live to feed anyway.

Just some thoughts to add to the conversation.

Troy
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AndyO'Connor
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by AndyO'Connor »

Troy hit on what I was going to say. The lesson learned from the photo should really be "Don't leave live rodents in with your snakes unattended, especially overnight". There are always some exceptions to feeding live vs. pre-killed. My coachwhip for example, will not touch pre-killed rodents, and will only consistently eat live fuzzy mice (even though he's 4 feet long and has eaten adults before) or lizards. I can leave a fuzzy in with him, but wouldn't with a hopper or larger live mouse. He's eaten freshly expired reptiles before, but never rodents.

I'm not saying that people SHOULD feed live or PK or FT, but there are always exceptions one direction or the other. These pictures are disturbing though, and I hope that more people learn that if the snake doesn't eat the prey within a short period of time, it's best to remove it and try again another day.
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jonathan
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by jonathan »

Thanks for the reminder, as bad as it is to see.

And it doesn't have to end nearly this bad to still be deadly. I remember reading when I was a kid about the possibility of snakes dying due to infection from a single rodent bite (either in "My Wild Kingdom" or "Keeper and the Kept", probably), and that lesson has stuck with me ever since.
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cbernz
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by cbernz »

I'm not a keeper, but it also seems like an unrealistically big rodent to be feeding to a little ball python.

When I was in middle school, we got a class anole in a large plastic terrarium, along with a container of live crickets. Everyone wanted to see the anole eat, and everyone of course wanted to feed it, so we ended up putting about 25 live crickets in the tank with this one, somewhat torpid lizard. When we returned to class after the weekend, there were about 25 live crickets happily feasting on what was left of the anole.

I think the next marking period, the teacher got us a couple goldfish.
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soulsurvivor
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by soulsurvivor »

This has happened to me, too. Many years ago when I used to keep snakes, my ex-husband threw a live hopper in with my favorite pygmy and left it. The hopper proceeded to chew on my snake's head until the bone was exposed in the nasal area. The snake only lived a few days after the incident. It really pissed me off because I liked to feed her big pinkies and small fuzzies - rodents that couldn't harm her. I know some snakes aren't keen on taking dead prey items, but if you have to feed live, you need to watch your animal until it eats!
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BillMcGighan
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by BillMcGighan »

Great reminder, Don.


TH
although I feed virtually everything frozen/thawed, this really is a situation that depends on the snake and the keeper. You could add the caveat that if you're going to feed live, to never leave the potential prey item in with the snake unmonitored (this situation could have been prevented by removing the rat from the cage after the snake showed no interest in it in the first hour).
Agreed.




Cbernz
I'm not a keeper, but it also seems like an unrealistically big rodent to be feeding to a little ball python.
Not at all



Tough lesson:
When I was 12, I had a very large communal colubrid cage with a medium sized Bull snake, a large Corn, and a large Black Racer. I fed all regularly on live mice, but always stayed to watch “the hunt” and insure everyone got their fair share.
I came into a windfall gift of 4 live mice and a live hamster. I had not realized as yet the dangers of doing anything with my animals when they were in the blue, or leaving live prey, unobserved.

I put the 5 rodents in the cage and left them overnight:
Next AM, 2 dead mice, half eaten from posterior up; one live mouse and one live hamster.

Left the live mouse and live hamster in the cage on the next night:
Next AM, mouse dead an half eaten plus a 4 ½ foot Racer half eaten, all with a very fat hamster.
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Don Becker
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by Don Becker »

this really is a situation that depends on the snake and the keeper
My rule is to always tell people to feed pre-killed. If there are circumstances that prevent you from doing so, then you have to feed live in those cases, but my opinion is that pre-killed should always be your first choice. I've had a number of snakes come from animal control that would only eat live food at first, and it didn't take long to get them eating F/T. The only snake that I have yet to get on to F/T mice is a Prairie Kingsnake that i currently have. It will eat fresh pre-killed though, just not F/T.
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The Real Snake Man
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by The Real Snake Man »

My dad and I (I'm seventeen) keep two captive-bred bullsnakes, both of which have always been ravenous when comes feeding time, no matter how frequently or how much we feed them. However, we've never tried rats with them. They are a little over four feet each, but I'm not comfortable with rats. The mice we gave them never gave the snakes any trouble, but now, because chicks are cheaper for us, we feed them chicks instead. Seeing as how I don't expect the chicks (they're pretty small) to peck my bullsnakes to death any time soon, we'll probably continue with live. The snakes are very docile to handle, but we transfer them to a different container for food, so they know what's coming and their temperaments change completely; I certainly would be cautious about giving live food to a more mild-mannered snake, however. Interesting photo.
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Sam Bacchini
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by Sam Bacchini »

BillMcGighan wrote:all with a very fat hamster.
Hamsters are mean little bastards.
btskanks
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by btskanks »

-Remember back when green tree pythons were very $, I saw a very blue -spotted, and for god's sake Female, killed by the first rat it was trying to be fed, it had just came into the states days earlier from kam's place [ bushmaster ], $5000- i think!-grabbed rat barely 1 inch to far back, rat turned and bit through brain, instant death-?-if bred how many $1000s lost!-btw-about 10years later I bought some that were several mons. old from Al Zulich in MD that came from a zoo in Fla. that had been badly damaged in a hurricaine, even then I think they were $750/babe.
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gbin
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by gbin »

gila-91 wrote:
BillMcGighan wrote:all with a very fat hamster.
Hamsters are mean little bastards.
They are, indeed! Always made me wonder how they became so popular as pets for kids.

I always fed fresh-killed or frozen-thawed prey when I kept snakes, except for those rare animals that steadfastly refused such. These exceptions were lizard eaters (the great majority of which can be weaned off live prey, too), mind you, and it's hard to imagine how a ground skink or green anole could do much harm to a scarlet kingsnake that didn't get around to eating the lizard right away. ;) I'm definitely not naysaying the advice not to feed live prey, but I must say that those few finicky snakes were real hardbodies compared to their brethren; it seemed pretty clear that the regular pursuit, capture and subduing of prey kept them in much better shape than would have been the case had they slurped up lifeless offerings as did the other snakes in my collection. This only makes sense, too, as captive life tends to be a pretty sedentary life.

So, not to derail this thread, but what do folks recommend by way of getting their snakes some exercise without resorting to feeding them live prey?

Gerry
pahothand
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by pahothand »

Yeah I wish I didn't have a few hots in my collection that won't take f/t rodents because that kind of outcome is my biggest fear.
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by ThomWild »

gbin wrote:
gila-91 wrote:So, not to derail this thread, but what do folks recommend by way of getting their snakes some exercise without resorting to feeding them live prey?
I like to still mimic the chase. I don't like to toss something in the cage to sit their until the snake find it convenient to slurp it up. I use forceps to hold the prey item as I move it around the cage, even after the snake grabs hold I will struggle a bit until it gets a nice tight coil. I have found with some of the adult snakes I have taken in that have only been fed on a platter so to speak, that some of them actually have to learn to constrict properly, they seem to be very clumsy at it for the first few feedings. Another I like to do a part from feeding time is to have a climbing tree on hand. When I am cleaning the tanks or otherwise working in the same room I let the snake cruise my potted hibiscus tree. I don't have any proof that these things actually benefit the snake in anyway but I think it does and as of yet I have not found these things to have any negative side effects, so at least it helps my personal sanity.

-Thomas
Jimi
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by Jimi »

gila-91 wrote:
So, not to derail this thread, but what do folks recommend by way of getting their snakes some exercise without resorting to feeding them live prey?
With dependable-feeder venomous snakes I always prefer live prey. The food is fresh, the captive is living as a true predator, not just a domesticated carnivore, and the captor is "kept honest". (There's nothing like that hop & flop death scene to beat down complacency. "Jeez-oh I gotta watch that thing! Holy CRAP!!!") And a lesser - but to me, real - consideration is, no rodents got CO2 gassed, and no humans had to kill rodents, with gas or anything else.

But that's probably not useful to most folks here, and it's exactly NOT what gila-91 was asking about. Something else I like & use is large, naturalistic vivaria. Nothing like a lab or prison situation, which I consider the surest route to a fat, psychopathic inhabitant. Snakes will just spend more time moving around a bigger cage, especially one with multiple horizontal strata. With live plants, deeper substrate, and maybe a water feature, all the more so - they do get rapidly accustomed to their habitat, but they just don't vegetate like they do in a "newspaper & paper towel tube in an aquarium" kind of setup. In a large interesting setup that offers some environmental gradients (light intensity, heat, ventilation/freshness of air) they often develop very cool-to-witness daily routines - a morning bask up high, drop down for a mid-day cruise/hunt, then hide or burrow for an afternoon nap, come back out for a dusk cruise, etc.

With such a cage you can take a page from Thomas' approach and scent-bump a prey item around the cage. Then you can leave it, or you can remove it until some later actual feeding event. A couple scent-bumps a week can really spice up that dusk cruise...

Another case of convergent herper evolution - back when I kept a lot of tree vipers I also had a "cleaning tree" (not a real bush, just a tall piece of forky manzanita screwed upright on a heavy plywood base). It was great for parking a snake while I poop-scooped & swapped out water bowls, pruned live plants, etc. (I say "parking" fairly literally - tree vipers really don't crawl around much, they mostly just park it and look "pretty in camo".) It was also extremely handy for avoiding conspecific bites, distraction-accidents to my self, etc during feeding episodes in those few cages that had >1 inhabitant.

Cheers,
Jimi
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Mike VanValen
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by Mike VanValen »

I didn't keep many snakes when I was keeping herps, but many turtles, monitors, and other lizards. I had a savannah monitor that loved to hunt down adult mice. Well, one time the mouse swung around and bit down on the lizards eye-ridge, narrowly missing the eye. I didn't know exactly what to do but the mouse then let go, and the monitor was able to take care of it. From that day, no more live rodents for my monitors.

Speaking of Hamsters, I once was given 2 of them. I didn't really want the rodents and was considering throwing them to one of my lizards or caiman. I woke up one morning to one bloody hamster and the remains of the other one. The cannibal hamster was quickly thrown to the monitors.
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by narrowfellow »

Not quite on topic, but we once found a radiotelemetered massasauga in SE AZ that had been neatly unzipped and all the organs removed, along with the major muscles along the spine. There were incisor holes into the brain case, and little rodent footprints in the dust all around it. We suspected a grasshopper mouse (if there were 10 lb grasshopper mice, we'd all be screwed).
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Kelly Mc
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by Kelly Mc »

When I have time I enjoy encouraging a little zest in feeding the snakes. Jimi mentioned his vipers use of branch/perch, which reminded me of a fun set up i had for the small/med boids - they were parrot grapevine type on a stand, and sometimes i would let a kid take the forceps and feed a snake. The boids readily shifted in a hardwired gear when feeding like that, hanging head down. Its nice to give snakes opportunities to engage in some of these simple diversities, spark some neurons, use some physical gifts and tendencies.

I have a mt king who is one of the most interesitng snakes i have ever fed, and watch. He has an active pattern of forage, hide and wait. When I let him "fail" to score and wait longer, he leaves his tail tip out - but after he is fed he never does.
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gbin
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by gbin »

ThomWild wrote:I like to still mimic the chase. I don't like to toss something in the cage to sit their until the snake find it convenient to slurp it up. I use forceps to hold the prey item as I move it around the cage, even after the snake grabs hold I will struggle a bit until it gets a nice tight coil...
I used to tease-feed my snakes (the ones that would indulge in the activity, anyway), too, Thomas. I think it's definitely better than nothing, but the difference in body condition between those few animals that insisted on live prey and the rest in my collection was nonetheless marked. I reckon Jimi's suggestion to use much larger, more diverse enclosures would certainly help. I wonder what percentage of herp keepers could be persuaded to switch to such, though, even among those who have firsthand experience with some of the worst results of sedentary captive life (e.g. egg binding and other problems associated with poor muscle tone/obesity). Too bad there isn't a "hamster wheel" equivalent available in the herp hobby.

Anyone have any other ideas on how to get snakes some exercise?

Gerry
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by klawnskale »

[quote="Kelly Mc"]When I have time I enjoy encouraging a little zest in feeding the snakes. Jimi mentioned his vipers use of branch/perch, which reminded me of a fun set up i had for the small/med boids - they were parrot grapevine type on a stand, and sometimes i would let a kid take the forceps and feed a snake. The boids readily shifted in a hardwired gear when feeding like that, hanging head down. Its nice to give snakes opportunities to engage in some of these simple diversities, spark some neurons, use some physical gifts and tendencies.

Kelly: within the zoo community this is referred to as "behavioral enrichment".
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Kelly Mc
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by Kelly Mc »

:thumb:
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Re: A reminder to feed your snakes pre-killed food.

Post by Antonsrkn »

I briefly volunteered with a project captive breeding Andean Condors. It wasn't feasible for them to get the same levels of activity and interaction as they would in the wild so we attempted various methods as forms of behavioral enrichment when it came to feeding time, these involved freezing the food in a giant block of ice, putting it in a cardboard box with smallish holes in it forcing the condor to tug the meat out of the holes, hiding it in various parts of the enclosure, etc.. Some Condors responded well others did not (for example we had an individual who was terrified of and refused to approach the cardboard box containing the meat) We were always trying to think of new ways to enrich life for the condors. Off topic even though there is something very reptilian about condors in my opinion. Of course these wouldn't really work that well with snakes, but its very interesting to think about behavior enrichment for captive reptiles. Can't say I have any bright ideas. I dont know much about keeping herps but my thoughts are maybe once in a while completely redoing the snakes terrarium in order to give it some new areas to explore, I would imagine this would work particularly well with arboreal species, but then again who knows it may be stressed when it discovers its favorite tree branch to coil up on is no longer there. Another thought for some snakes that readily feed is scenting a few different areas in a controlled environment with prey and having it search the prey out, but I dont imagine that this would work all that well in most cases as many snakes would be much more likely to just curl up somewhere and wait. The reason i think of it is snakes like Psuestes that raid bird nests. Obviously the key thing is mimicking natural behaviors in a controlled environment and its not easy.
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