Varied diet

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mwentz
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Joined: December 8th, 2012, 3:06 pm

Varied diet

Post by mwentz »

After the recent spat new and bumped to the top threads about diet, it got me thinking. (Thinking is usually where I get in trouble :lol: )

For some herps it is advisable and reccomended to try and vary the diet. Different insects such as roaches, crickets, etc...

With the effort that people go through to convert some snakes to rodents from lizards or frogs or other prey, is it ill advised to offer the original prey again? Will a snake unconverted or revert to preferring the more traditional diet for that species? Possibly wasting the effort to change the diet over in the first place.

If a captive will continue to eat rodents after having an item or two of the traditional diet, would this help alleviate any or some dietary deficiencies?

Thanks for any thoughts
Matt

Edit: for clarity I should ask if there is any benefit to a varied diet for snakes?
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Kelly Mc
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Re: Varied diet

Post by Kelly Mc »

When snakes eat whole prey they arent going to acquire defeciences. There may be subclinical ones with nutrients we dont know about. And reasonable theories like goldfish diets and thiamanese.

I have never fed a lizard to a Lizard Eater as Baby snake so thats a question for the many other keepers here who can comment fully.

Any other generalists feeders that I have offered both chicks and rodents have seemed to switch to one and the other with only differences in proclivity per individual.

On the theory that most cultured rodent diets have less tocopheryl than the live plants and seeds of wild diets i have put a smudge of it on the rump of the mouse every now and then especially with females.

Otherwise it is more dietary excess that could be an issue with limited choices that we have. Snakes are rather robotic cue triggered feeders that when fed thawed food arent really candidated for enrichment of varied hunt, prey shape manipulation and flavors that would perhaps be of value in other reptile feeding behaviors.

Also i would like to clarify there was no recent spat. I bumped a thread on inadvertent enthusiasm for the topic alone. All that choppy stuff was from a long time ago. I was overly sensitive and felt outnumbered and lonely in the thread then. Character defect.
mwentz
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Joined: December 8th, 2012, 3:06 pm

Re: Varied diet

Post by mwentz »

Kelly mc, thanks for the thoughts.

Sorry, I didn't mean spat in any negative way, however I may have chosen the wrong word anyways. My fault.

I guess my thought were more towards the subclinical nutriment dificiencies. However if I had thought it through, most of the food items we offer are vertabrates, and are unlikely to be too different in gross composition, and really only differing in the percentages of fat, protien, amino acids, water content, etc. (Except in cases such as goldfish like you mentioned).

As for some of the other things you mentioned, I didn't even think about prey shape, thanks for the food for thought.

Cheers
Matt
VICtort
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Re: Varied diet

Post by VICtort »

Prey choice and scientific- defensible nutrition studies on long term health are lacking. In contrast, valuable commercial livestock, dogs and cats etc. have extensive feeding trials to support feed choices and economics/formulations. Thus we herp keepers are subject to anecdotal or biased observations without adequate controls or adequate sample groups.

We default to the experiences of successful mentors and our own observations. Some of us try to provide what we think is a "wild diet", hoping that nature is a worthy model for captives (not always so due to less demanding captive environment).

Sometimes "you can't argue with success", and we do what we are told. Sometimes bold keepers make break throughs (or mistakes) by doing things differently.

I work with one of the most non-selective, catholic feeders imaginable, Eastern indigos. I feed them chicks, quail, mice, frogs, rats, cavys, fish, snakes, etc. Diet is proportionately bird based. I feed a variety on the unproven belief that it provides trace elements and buffers excesses. I try to stimulate them in the limitations of a captive environment. I know others who feed exclusively rodents, and they are equally successful based on our relatively short term and small sample groups. It is apparent to me that my indigos get very excited over certain prey items.

Individuals may have quirky habits, and it may be a demanding task to convert them to a prey item easy for the keeper. I remember a wild caught northern pine that would only eat pinky rabbits...not easy. I know folks who try with varying success to feed atypical items rather than those favored I.e. eastern hogs/rodents. Mudsnakes to rodents , Mussuranas to rodents. Some of us remember a reportedly nutritionally sound snake sausage marketed...
The point is different approaches may achieve same goal but many conclusions lack data to support them.

I offered day old quail to L. zonata, and they favored them to rodents. People often speculate on what is best, but can not prove it. Some breeders favor a simple and restricted diet of captive raised mice only and they are successful for many generations with no apparent deficiencies observed. My choice of feeding a varied diet is primarily a quality of life issue, there is no evidence to me it is superior than "rats only".

If you have a steady feeder that was initially difficult to establish, it might well be a mistake to offer it a hard to provide prey item ..."don't fix it if it ain't broke". Many of us have had an individual seemingly "hooked" on a hard to provide item I. e. scarlet king on ground skinks.

Enough..there is much we don't know about long term nutrition in the captive environment. Most of us have animals heavier/fatter on average than what we see in "the wild"...and just because an animal likes a specific item does not mean it is best in long run.

Vic
mwentz
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Re: Varied diet

Post by mwentz »

Hi Vic,

Thanks for the info and thoughts.

I remember the sausage that was marketed years back. I have been out of herps and herping for a long time, and just got back into the field last year, and keeping a snake a few months ago. I grew up keeping all sorts of herps, but this was pre-internet for me, so all I had access to were some old books. I remember reading that feeding a snake anything dead would kill it or make it severely sick. The MUST have live food. A few years before I stopped keeping herps, Reptiles magazine came out, and I found out you could feed Frozen thawed mice to snakes.

Before I got my current snake I had done a lot of reading to make sure that I could take care of it properly, and had found that a lot of things that were once staples had changed. Hot rocks were out, Front opening cages had become available, All sorts of oppinions on the internet, ball pythons were available in soooo many colors(!).

So now I have 2 kingsnakes, and can see a very clear personality difference. One is a pig, and would eat anything I put in front of him, and yet is very calm. Such that I can weigh him every day without stressing him out. It is giving me an idea of how his length, mass, and food mass are related. The other is flighty, high strung, and occasionally refuses a meal. I do not weigh her every day, as I think it would stress her out. Maybe she will calm down in the future.

I would love to do an actual experiment and see how much growth rates vary with food items, but I don't want to have too many captives. So I just content myself with my small (1) sample size.

I do like your thoughts on trying to stimulate in a limited captive environment. Too that end I have offered many hides, and stuctures so far in their tubs, and found that they will often spend the day moving from hide to hide. The hides have different temps, and differing substrates. Some have moss, some aspen. The only time I see either one stay in a single hide for more than a day is the day after feeding, or while in blue.

So much to learn.
matt
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Kelly Mc
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Re: Varied diet

Post by Kelly Mc »

Great topic mwentz.

yes i have observed many tactile preferences and mobility behaviors with snakes and other reptiles. When you think of it what animal has a more intimate bodily relationship with its immediate surface area than a snake?

When i saw the topic i thought of Vic immediately and hoped he would chime in with the Indigo Exception. Not being a constrictor or a venomous snake and having so many organisms from egg to adulthood to overpower and manage gives them some edgy skills.

One thing I noticed with older tortoises and box turtles is an acqured savvy in using their paws to manipulate different food objects - like 'pinwheeling' a peice of food around and around till it disappears, or eating viscous food substances that are on their paws - holding the paw up in poise to reach it. Younger chelonians dont do it - its something that seems to develop with the experience of many years.

Other feeding varietal behaviors seem more stereotypic - like the way a tree frog will dispatch a loopy earthworm by shoving it in with paws - often grasping it paw over paw. Mt horned lizards also have distinctive tactics when given earthworms that encorperate completely different movements than the way other worms are eaten.
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pete
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Re: Varied diet

Post by pete »

Thamnophis are another group that benefit from a varied diet. I found that a diet consisting of fish,rodents ,earthworms and frogs kept the snakes at a healthier weight than a plain rodent diet. Rodents only garters tended to be obese by their second year, even though they grew faster initially.
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Kelly Mc
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Re: Varied diet

Post by Kelly Mc »

pete wrote:Thamnophis are another group that benefit from a varied diet. I found that a diet consisting of fish,rodents ,earthworms and frogs kept the snakes at a healthier weight than a plain rodent diet. Rodents only garters tended to be obese by their second year, even though they grew faster initially.

Great contribution to the thread Pete - hey you should post more stuff especially sharing your Garters, they are under represented in the hobby but alot of us love em Here :D Stunning and wonderful snakes.

Kel
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pete
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Re: Varied diet

Post by pete »

Thanks Kelly ,
I don't keep snakes anymore, but did for over 25 years. Lots of fun and hard work :)
Just have a few dendrobatid frogs now. They are the herp equivalent of tropical fish and damn fine alarm clocks!
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Kelly Mc
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Re: Varied diet

Post by Kelly Mc »

Cool :thumb: man it seems like time moves faster through the day - same hours but tinkering time seems squashed and hurried.

I have been tempted to get some garters of my own, pugets sound, or marcianus, but i would want to feed them like you do and i have a group of lizards right now that eat a varied diet and relieve themselves like pigeons in their enclosures. Sometimes im not done till 1 am.

Your darts sound happy too - thanks for sharing and posting :)
mwentz
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Re: Varied diet

Post by mwentz »

Thanks all, for the comments.

I didn't even think about the varied diet that garters would eat. But as said, they are under represented. Sounds like if someone wants to keep a snake that will eat anything, indigos and garters are a good starting place.

And I find it super interesting that the varied diet for the garters keeps them less fat.

Im going to google it, but do the fish and earthworms (and lizards I suppose) have a dramaticly lowered energy density? Maybe with the snake feeling hungry more often itgoes cruising the cage more often, leading to better muscle tone?
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Joseph S.
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Re: Varied diet

Post by Joseph S. »

rodents may be more calorically dense, but this could in theory be fixed my feeding less. Comparing diets would only work if the calorie intake of the animals is approximately equal.
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Kelly Mc
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Re: Varied diet

Post by Kelly Mc »

In my experiences caring for garters they were eager to eat much more often than mammal primary colubrids, and spent far shorter time - if any - in POTZ repose after a meal.

Attempting to contort the intrinsics of an animals metabolism, hunger cycle, food adaptations and forage/activity habits doesnt sound like good keeping to me.
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pete
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Re: Varied diet

Post by pete »

Garters do have a fast metabolism , I fed weekly or bi weekly to keep them lean. Not starved but lean. In the wild they are active snakes and it is hard to provide a large enough enclosure to accommodate that behavior. Even with lighter feedings, rodent only snakes became obese over time.
Just observation not true science.
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Kelly Mc
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Re: Varied diet

Post by Kelly Mc »

I have noticed same with a long term observed group of Whites Tree Frogs - recieved as newly morphed froglets - exampled observational case by 4 guys - 2 that i took and 2 that a client/friend got at the same time. His are the ones i have had most contact with as i see him regularly. I have a formula that they are set up in that all of our guys were raised in - 18 Tall tank,5.0 tube,cork cylanders. grapevine branch, moist moss hide, UTH on back wall. Both his and my frogs started off on crickets and commercial redworms. Like Whites do - They Grew. My friends partner did not like the crickets and both saw per photos and vids on youtube whites eating pinkies. So they started feeding theirs pinkies. I differed in my feeding practices and when mine grew large enough , fed them the larger earthworms and silkworms, as well as thawed insects off of forceps. I shared with him my thoughts on feeding but he reported that his frogs stopped accepting all other food but their once a week pinky which he came in to get live every saterday. After 5 years both of his frogs had milky areas in both eyes as well as a bloated and watery edema - which he did not see as a critical problem. 2 years later one of his frogs expired suddenly and the other ones eyes are dense with corneal opacities. I boarded the frog and habituated him to earthworms and no more pinkies. My 2 frogs look the same as they did when they first reached adult size - eyes completely clear. Recently I have included a thawed pink every now and then to their diet as some of their favorite foods - ie the silkworms are spotty in availability. I pinch them open however and remove the milk filled stomach, and offal of nitrogenous wastes that are unnecessary to give them and i theorize the less ammonia and mammalian milk makes a more frog suitable food item. If i fed them pinkies more often i would occasionally pull out the rich liver every this or that time as well. It takes mere seconds.

They have not developed the extremis supraorbital adipose features one often sees - that actually completely covers over the eyes. Their adult morphological features have not changed and their eyes are clear.

* i must mention that they clearly like the pinkies - one of them leaps across the enclosure to take them. These guys are habituation subjects who i also have gotten them to take raw turkey pieces from forceps - with a fair acceptance rate - if the peice has the same general form and size as a medium pink. I am doubtful they encounter neonatal rodents in biome - so it is still a mystery why they respond so eagerly to the pinks. I speculate that if i were offering small frogs or geckos they would react same. Some visual of conventional vertebrate organization - and a cue trigger of attractive prey size and instinctive vertebrate food value.
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