Caught wild mice...would you use them as food for you snake?

[BROWNS]

Yep i know all that,i only use the tail and scent,does the trick most times with stubborn feeders and an abundance of them,i let the geckos go and they regenerate a new tail which is more tails for scenting which without i'm sure i wouldn't have got my gts onto pinkies first feed.Some people use chicks and quails...whatever works best for you at the least risk to the animal obviously.

 

[PilbaraPythons]

For interest sake heres is my experience. Living in Innisfail North Queensland, a very good friend of mine owned a chicken farm and it was absolutely over run by wild mice. At night time in the chicken feeding races you could see thousands of mice. My self and another friend would just walk down these races with a head torch on, glove on my right hand, garbage bin in my left. We used to catch hundreds each in a 20 minute period. All these mice were regulary feed to all my snakes and we caught mice to fed our snakes like this for about three years up until the closure of the farm. In all that time I never had one snake die from eating those mice and we fed off a few thousand. Back then if I had the option of free captive breed mice in such large numbers I probably would not have bothered with the wild ones. If you can guarantee however that your wild caught mice have not been in contact with bait etc I think that this practice is okay as a last option. The important thing to do as already mentioned by others is to make sure that you freeze them for a few weeks first. In those days I must admit though that I was a bit hap hazard and didn't allways practice what I now preach.
Cheers Dave

 

[The Rock]

Yes Dave I remeber those days when you where doing that and I also remember advising you against it. Its not worms Id be worried about but protozoans and other bacterial parasites such as pseudomnias,(if thats the right spelling). These are the main bacterial parasites that effect wild animals. All wild animals will carry these. Because alot of these parasites,(including some species of worms), have direct life-cycles they can build up to harmful levels very quickly in captivity if left untreated. No dont risk it.
Rob

 

[herptrader]

Obviously wild serpents will be eating wild prey for the most part and do quite well on it.

There is no way I would take a mouse caught in suburbia because you have no way of knowing whether its last meal was crust of bread, a bait or plastic off electrical wiring. Wild rabbits or mice collected from a an organic wheat farm I cannot see a problem with particularly after they have been frozen for quite some time. To me this can be a win win situation with a pest being turned into a product.