Feeding Jumbo Rats.

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Magic

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I know their unhealthy and very fatty for Snakes.

I know you can feed smaller items to them.

What about feeding large Quails and Rabbits to them ?


Pro's and Con's.



Thank you !
 
For what snake?

If the snake can handle rabbits and quail it's okay obviously.
 
Big snake + Big rat/rabbit.

Just go size appropriate.
 
I know their unhealthy and very fatty for Snakes.

I know you can feed smaller items to them.

What about feeding large Quails and Rabbits to them ?


Pro's and Con's.



Thank you !

How do you know they are very fatty and unhealthy for snakes?
 
It is suggested in many places that BHP's should not be fed larger rats due to high fat content being a contributor to fatty liver disease.

Probably important to mention what snakes you are feeding.
 
It's a bit of an urban myth that jumbo rats are bad for snakes. It's another example of the food faddists extrapolating what may be the case with too many fatty chops for humans to a reptile example. The problem with any of these metabolic diseases is simply overfeeding in general - too much food of any kind will eventually cause problems in the long-term, and we habitually feed our snakes maybe 3-4 or more times what they would eat in the wild. Plus we keep it going 12 months of the year in many instances. When I was dealer in WA I had Stmson's males which would only eat 3-4 mice a year, over a 3-4 month period in summer, and they remained perfectly healthy.

I've never heard of jumbo rats causing any problems (that could be sheeted home to the rats themselves) when fed in appropriate numbers to adult snakes. By the time a snake is big enough to eat jumbo rats, it should only be getting one every two to four weeks, as growth will have slowed considerably.

Jamie
 
It is suggested in many places that BHP's should not be fed larger rats due to high fat content being a contributor to fatty liver disease.

Probably important to mention what snakes you are feeding.

Perhaps the fatty rats being bad, is a sort of chinese whispers thing. One person suggests it , another repeats it, and before you know it it becomes another internet fact. It stands to reason that old slow rats at the end of their life become easier prey for snakes in the wild and so become a regular part of the diet. If you disect rats of various sizes there is not a lot of difference in fat contents, and i think what difference there is is a result of their diet rather than size.
 
Not commenting to affirm any side of the argument, but words from Simon Stone on the matter...

"Captive bred rodents carry a lot more rich fat than most wild prey and when fed in excess to demanding young womas they cause what I call fatty liver disease. In the early days when we were growing up our first womas, I was seduced by their craving for food and my desire to see them grow quickly and so I overfed a couple of youngsters. They showed no symptoms as they grew at a rapid pace until one day they just stopped feeding. Shortly after this, they started passing a dark green tar-like substance and shortly afterwards one of them died. The second one was given various treatments including cortisone injections and eventually appeared to get better. After three months of care and treatment, I gave her a very small meal of mouse which she took eagerly. The next morning when I checked on her, I found her dead. Autopsies on both these snakes showed large amounts of fat throughout the body and around a liver that was obviously very unhealthy. This problem of killing snakes by overfeeding them rodents rich in fat is also apparent to a lesser degree in black-headed pythons. It would appear that the genus Aspidites (includes womas and BHPs) which are known to be reptile feeders are prone to this problem. As a matter of course, we are very particular about what we feed all our snakes, no matter what the species, and only feed them medium sized lean rats now. Not only does this keep our animals healthy, but we have found this practise also has delivered better breeding results."
 
Not commenting to affirm any side of the argument, but words from Simon Stone on the matter...

"Captive bred rodents carry a lot more rich fat than most wild prey and when fed in excess to demanding young womas they cause what I call fatty liver disease. In the early days when we were growing up our first womas, I was seduced by their craving for food and my desire to see them grow quickly and so I overfed a couple of youngsters. They showed no symptoms as they grew at a rapid pace until one day they just stopped feeding. Shortly after this, they started passing a dark green tar-like substance and shortly afterwards one of them died. The second one was given various treatments including cortisone injections and eventually appeared to get better. After three months of care and treatment, I gave her a very small meal of mouse which she took eagerly. The next morning when I checked on her, I found her dead. Autopsies on both these snakes showed large amounts of fat throughout the body and around a liver that was obviously very unhealthy. This problem of killing snakes by overfeeding them rodents rich in fat is also apparent to a lesser degree in black-headed pythons. It would appear that the genus Aspidites (includes womas and BHPs) which are known to be reptile feeders are prone to this problem. As a matter of course, we are very particular about what we feed all our snakes, no matter what the species, and only feed them medium sized lean rats now. Not only does this keep our animals healthy, but we have found this practise also has delivered better breeding results."

By his own admission in the above extract, just like all the people who (have done or still do) treat their snakes like factories ,Simon was (and possibly still is) guilty of overfeeding. He might be able to breed but personally I wouldn't put too much faith in what he says when he goes off on such tangents.

A lot of breeders don't just remove eggs to incubate in better hope of a more successful hatch rate. They do it so they can feed the female up so instead of the snake slowly recovering to breeding condition biannually or triannual as they do naturally, breeders remove the eggs to save waiting and increase the female's food as a means of increasing their body mass so they can breed them annually. This must have a detrimental affect on the long term health and eventually life span of the critters. I can't count the number of obese snakes I see these days.

Personally I don't see any hard evidence to support his statement about older rodents containing excess fat that is a contributing fact to liver problems and am of the opinion it was only an assumption on his part as a means to justify the mortality rate from the habit of overfeeding.

Sure Womas and BHP's are primarily reptile feeders in the wild and it might just be the captive practice of using rats and mice as their main diet and feeding them too often that could contribute to any liver problems.

George
 
By his own admission in the above extract, just like all the people who (have done or still do) treat their snakes like factories ,Simon was (and possibly still is) guilty of overfeeding. He might be able to breed but personally I wouldn't put too much faith in what he says when he goes off on such tangents.

A lot of breeders don't just remove eggs to incubate in better hope of a more successful hatch rate. They do it so they can feed the female up so instead of the snake slowly recovering to breeding condition biannually or triannual as they do naturally, breeders remove the eggs to save waiting and increase the female's food as a means of increasing their body mass so they can breed them annually. This must have a detrimental affect on the long term health and eventually life span of the critters. I can't count the number of obese snakes I see these days.

Personally I don't see any hard evidence to support his statement about older rodents containing excess fat that is a contributing fact to liver problems and am of the opinion it was only an assumption on his part as a means to justify the mortality rate from the habit of overfeeding.

Sure Womas and BHP's are primarily reptile feeders in the wild and it might just be the captive practice of using rats and mice as their main diet and feeding them too often that could contribute to any liver problems.

George

The excess feeding I agree with, I'd say about 95% off keepers are guilty of this at some level, whether intentional or not...

As for fat content - Stone was not stating excessive fat in older rodents - he was stating higher levels of rich fat - which would be based on the rodents diet of pet grade food, rather than what rodents would eat in the wild, which would then be fed on by reptiles...

As for mortality rate - this is an instance from about 1990, when very little was known about aspidites, and as evidenced in his own words, plenty has been learned from it.
Not defending someone else, but don't jump all over someone just because you have a differing opinion on breeding...
 
My friend I don't see anywhere that I've stated I prefer one method of breeding to another. People can do what they like as far as I'm concerned. My point is that captive held reptiles are no where near as active as their wild counterparts and as such, for what ever purpose when they are overfed they don't have the opportunity to burn off calories, hence they become obese very quickly and this alone has detrimental effect on many organs including the heart, liver and kidneys.

If you can provide me with evidence that commercial rodent food contains a higher rich fat content than food consumed by wild rodents I'd be very interested in having a read.

It depends on how one determines the word rich...to me, I read it as excessive, others may differ. Personally I don't see any benefit that a commercial provider of pet food would have by providing a high rich fat diet, besides I'm sure the amount of fat content would be governed by a manufacturing body

He starts off by declaring captive rodents carry a higher level of rich fats than wild ones and I was wondering where he gets his evidence. He goes on to say that autopsies of both snakes revealed large amounts of fat in the snakes bodies and around the liver but doesn't state that this is a direct result of a higher level of rich fat content in the rodents, just a high fat content. Naturally if snakes are fed continuous and abundant regular meals of rodents (which contain fat) and are restricted in their exercise they will accumulate fat because they don't possess the opportunity to burn off calories.

The benefits of having a diet rich in fat far outway a diet that contains less fat or no fat at all. Any one or anything can eat a diet high in fat so long as they exercise regularly to burn off the calories. Apart from medical conditions, fat doesn't make animals (that includes humans) fat, it's the excess consumption of food and not exercising.
 
My friend I don't see anywhere that I've stated I prefer one method of breeding to another. People can do what they like as far as I'm concerned. My point is that captive held reptiles are no where near as active as their wild counterparts and as such, for what ever purpose when they are overfed they don't have the opportunity to burn off calories, hence they become obese very quickly and this alone has detrimental effect on many organs including the heart, liver and kidneys.

If you can provide me with evidence that commercial rodent food contains a higher rich fat content than food consumed by wild rodents I'd be very interested in having a read.

It depends on how one determines the word rich...to me, I read it as excessive, others may differ. Personally I don't see any benefit that a commercial provider of pet food would have by providing a high rich fat diet, besides I'm sure the amount of fat content would be governed by a manufacturing body

He starts off by declaring captive rodents carry a higher level of rich fats than wild ones and I was wondering where he gets his evidence. He goes on to say that autopsies of both snakes revealed large amounts of fat in the snakes bodies and around the liver but doesn't state that this is a direct result of a higher level of rich fat content in the rodents, just a high fat content. Naturally if snakes are fed continuous and abundant regular meals of rodents (which contain fat) and are restricted in their exercise they will accumulate fat because they don't possess the opportunity to burn off calories.

The benefits of having a diet rich in fat far outway a diet that contains less fat or no fat at all. Any one or anything can eat a diet high in fat so long as they exercise regularly to burn off the calories. Apart from medical conditions, fat doesn't make animals (that includes humans) fat, it's the excess consumption of food and not exercising.

I entirely agree with all of this.
 
I wonder what's the difference between "rich" fat and "not-so-rich" fat? As George suggests, the problem has far more to do with overfeeding. Given that eating is just about all our captives in cages do for exercise, and it's something that's always interesting to watch (I still get a kick out of seeing a snake deal with food) it's not surprising that pet-keepers feed far more often than they need to.

Jamie
 
There's a lot of good information in this thread regarding fat.

Its a huge misconception, in people too,that eating fat results in being fat. Fat in the body is simply stored energy which comes about by not utilising the amount of energy being fed to an animal. So, if feeding jumbos to your snake keep in mind that you don't want to over feed your animal.

Pro's
Don't have to feed snake as often
Possibly cheaper

Con's
Can result in animal being over fed
 
It's definitely a misconception. The 'fat is bad' myth seems confined to modern western mythology, spread by the dieting industry. Some reptile keepers then transfer this myth on to their snakes!

In Asia where you hardly see any fat people and the women have tight little petite bodies, they eat a lot of fat. They don't go for lean meat like we do, the Japanese love the fattiest cuts of beef, the Thais love their pork with the whole outer layer of fat left on, etc. Then in the USA, Australia, etc., we eat lean meat and do whatever we can to avoid fat. And we're the most obese people in the world. The big difference is that Asians don't overeat. Fat is good for you! Not processed fats like you'll get in chocolate and doughnuts obviously, but unprocessed fat on your pork or avocado etc is healthy. Just don't consume too many calories (and don't listen to the myths perpetuated by the weight loss industry!)

You'll notice Simon Stone was not talking about big rats. He did not mention jumbo rats. He was talking about captive rats (all sizes). He wasn't feeding jumbo rats to his young womas, obviously. He continued using captive rats to feed his womas, it was still all he fed them, he just said he fed them less.

If you cut open a wild lizard, snake or frog, it has a lot of fat in it. Wild snakes carry quite a surprising amount of fat (cut open a road-killed snake next time you see one - the fat is primarily stored in the abdomen rather than under the skin like in mammals, even a fairly skinny wild snake has absolutely heaps of fat). So, a wild snake eating other snakes consumes a lot of fat. It is natural and normal.

The primary difference whether you're looking at petite Asians or obese western folk, or fat captive Aspidites/trim wild Aspidites, is the amount they eat, not whether their calories come from protein or fat.
 
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