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 !
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.
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
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.
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