Feeding Snakes drumsticks, chicken necks, etc

[Sdaji]

I remember watching a doco on the BTS in Guam, and some had actually started foraging in the rubbish bins, they had footage of one actually eating a cooked sausage. (they may not eat chicken legs in the wild, but they don't often have access to them either) Are you going to try differant meats on differant animals? red meat, poultry ect?

It's early days and I'm not getting ahead of myself. I don't think there is a huge amount of difference between the nutritional value of vertebrate muscles. At this stage I'm just trying to establish whether or not bone, muscle, fat and skin is enough to keep snakes healthy. If so I'll try taking out the skin. It's not a funded study, so I'm not going to go much beyond what is functionally relevant to me. Time will tell, I don't have anything to report just yet; I'm just wanting to hear from people who have already invented the wheel I'm working on.

 

[inthegrass]

although i have not been doing it for a long time, i have mds and bredli that do not blink when it comes to downing chicken necks and drum sticks/skin off.
i wish more of my snakes would eat this way. i am interested in trying other types of meat.
might have to give it a go.
cheers

 

[Simple]

As snakes become futher removed from the wild I think their acceptance of alternate foods will increase and the alternate food market will be huge, at what cost that is to be seen. Interesting to see the out come.

 

[cris]

Im havnt heard of any real scientific trials, i feed my reptiles fairly heavily on poultry necks, fish and foods that arnt rodents. I do supplement with supplements fairly often though if feeding plain meats or just meat and bone. I cant imagine they are missing out on anything if they are supplemented, but i will let you know if my reptiles suddenly drop dead. I havnt eaten a whole vertebrate my whole life and i havnt died yet and i also like eating chicken necks. I have raised spotted pythons and common tree snakes on diets consisting of not much rodent, but as mentioned not simply meat and bone alone and often with whole prey fed randomly too(mainly fish and rats). They are only around 3yo but seem to be doing as well as if fed a more popular diet.

The only concern i have with feeding things like chicken and beef is the antibiotics that are in it, probably worth looking at just as much as nutrional value. Perhaps my concern is not justified, but i dont know.

I would be looking overseas first, im fairly sure there are a range of artificial diets available, you could look at what is in them and work out what is and isnt needed. I cant really see how you could prove too much with a trial(well one less than 30 years long), i would be looking at what the snake needs, what it can and cant synthesise and what is and isnt in the foods you are talking about. It may be more work but it will give a much better result IMO.

 

[DDALDD]

For those unfamiliar with the debate, most people assume that snakes which naturally eat whole animals need to do so in captivity in order to be healthy. The reasoning is that they need all the goodies in the organs, with muscle, bone, fat, skin and fur not being enough on their own.


Sdaji

Is there any other reasoning to it than that? It sounds like a case of "if they do it in the wild, they should do it captivity also," which can be sound logic but is certainly not applicable all the time. I've read that many captive snakes are fed animals that they would never hunt in the wild anyway, not sure if it's relevant to this discussion but an interesting side note. Again, will be looking forward to the results.

 

[caustichumor]

If the trial started with hatchlings say half a clutch fed a traditional rodent based menu, and the others fed alternative flesh based foods, With monthly weighing and monitoring shedding records, scats ect you could get a fairly indicitive comparrison of any noticable differances (in a short-term trials at least)
You never know, with the hormones fed to farmed meat poultry, you could end up with a 5 foot death adder that eats whole chickens...

 

[cris]

Also i forgot to mention i try to use animals that havnt been bled, blood has lots of goodies in it.

 

[Col J]

Good work Sdaji. Are you going to have a control group as well as the experimental group?

I feed my pythons a base diet of rats & supplemental chicken necks. The bhp's especially like them except for one female which won't touch them until she has had her rat first. That's OK by me. The others hook into them straight up. The morelia are a mixed bag, as some will take them & some won't. I tried to convert a 5yo md fem onto necks by suturing a rat onto a neck. (no kidding!) she took the rat & constricted the neck & pulled until she broke 2 of the 3 sutures. She ended up eating it, but tried her best to get rid of the neck part of the feed. Haven't tried her since because I reckon I would hate someone to suture a stinking carrot onto my steak!

I started supplemental feeding after I was told of Solar's bhp fem thriving & breeding on a diet of drumsticks & the odd multivitamin. I was concerned about feeding large rats which were carrying a greater percentage of fat & take so long to grow to the larger sizes. They now get the same weight of feed by having a medium sized, leaner rat & chicken neck supplements.

I haven't noticed any difference in their health or growth rates & will continue to feed lean chicken meat supplements.

Another advantage is that if I ever have a rat shortage, (heaven forbid) I should be able to feed them necks & drumsticks, as they already have the taste for them.

my 2 cents worth,

Col J.

 

[Emzie]

would like to see the results, buying a kilo of chicken necks is alot cheaper then buying rats

 

[jasontttt]

The biggest killer of reptiles and humans or any animal for that matter is over feeding and hi fat diets, mybe lean chicken necks could be a good thing,some reptile breeders ,i have herd are feeding 75% chicken, and their snakes are breeding. alot of snakes I have found in the wild are very under weight , whose to say that reptiles need alot of vitamins etc to live healthy?

 

[Sdaji]

Cris: Crikey! The whole point of this experiment is to test what they need, not research what is in their natural diet and replicate it. The easiest way to give them everything which is in a whole animal is to give them a whole animal! The only benefit of the artificial diets are that they don't freak out squeamish people. I am not in the slightest bit squeamish. I could give them the occasional whole animal or supplement, but that would defeat the point of the experiment. I don't think 30 years is required. If you can grow a tiny baby up into a healthy adult and get it to produce healthy babies, that's enough for me to think we have some very useful results. Yes, it's possible that the snakes may die in 20 years rather than 50, or 50 rather than 100 (we don't yet know how long they live for), or maybe they'll live to 100 years rather than 80. We won't know everything, but we'll have some useful information and if things are going well I'll continue.

You didn't evolve eating an exclusive diet of whole animals, so it's not surprising that you can do without them. You should try eaten some though, it's lots of fun.

The 'supermarket meat chemicals' are probably not worth worrying about, but it's easy enough to use wild meat (one deer will provide about a zillion Death Adder meals, and hey, it'll sound cool if I can say my Death Adders eat venison), so that's probably what I'll use.

Yes, I have controls, although I'm not claiming that this is going to be a finely tuned experiment which will be publishable in Nature. It's just a little backyard experiment. If there is a 10% difference in growth rate, I'm not going to notice it because I'm not going to be caring. If you get two littermates and grow them up under identical conditions you'll usually get more than a 10% difference in growth anyway. I'm just wanting to know if they're going to be basically healthy on muscle, bone, fat and skin.

DDALDD: As far as I know there's nothing more to it than 'it happens in the wild so it is necessary in captivity', which is a severely flawed way of thinking and all too common among reptile keepers. I don't think there's much nutritional difference between a whole bird, a whole mammal and a whole reptile, but there is a fair bit of difference between a whole animal and a piece of muscle and a bone.

Thanks to those who are interested in helping me with the basics of experiment design I'm an honours graduate, one of my majors was zoology and I've studied chemistry and nutrition among several other things, so I pretty much that side of things covered I do appreciate some of the other points though, even if only because without taking some things into account, many reptile keepers will dismiss the results no matter how valid they are.

Cheers

 

[m.punja]

Got me on board Sdaji, I have been using chicken necks as a supliment and thought of this exact experiment over and over, so what the hell I'll join. I've got some yearling tigers I'll put some souley one bone, meat and skin and some I'll keep on rodent. I'll also change the diet of some of the adult tigers to no rodent or whole bodied feeds.

 

[m.punja]

I have heard of somewhere making their own reptile food, they mix whatever they think is needed in a reptile feed into a sausage

 

[Chris1]

in america u can get vegetarian snake sausages,.....would be interesting to see how long they can live on tofu,....

 

[cris]

Cris: Crikey! The whole point of this experiment is to test what they need, not research what is in their natural diet and replicate it.

Sorry what i said wasnt very clearly expressing what i meant(im a bit retarded lol), i was just thinking it would be better to look at things on a nutritional level rather than just feeding one lot of snakes rodents and the other chicken necks(or whatever) and waiting to see what happens(after reading the above post it seems you may have already done this?). Im not suggesting a healthy snake has to have all that is in a natural diet.

Could you share any details about what you have done and are planning to do? I just find it interesting and you havnt really given any sort of detail to indicate how exactly you are approaching it. Have you already identified any likely problems?

 

[RedEyeGirl]

looking forward to the results Sdaji, let me know if it works out OK

 

[Kathryn_]

I'll be very curious to see how this works out. Being a utilitarian hippie I'd much rather a few hundred large animals die to feed my girl, than a few thousand small ones.

in america u can get vegetarian snake sausages,.....would be interesting to see how long they can live on tofu,....

Oddly enough, you can get vegan cat-food that has everything they need without any bioavailablity issues (as far as I'm aware). Seems counter intuitive, but there you have it. I'd go so far as to say I'll bet it's damn sight *better* for them than the 100% whiskas diet. I still think of futurama every time, though.

Hippie: We thought a lion to eat tofu!
Very skinny lion: (cough)

 

[Tatelina]

Just a question...maybe stupid but are these
just your every day supermarket drumsticks?
If so I question the chemicals etc
that get pumped into these kinds of meats...
I never eat supermarket meat for that reason.
Interesting experiment all the same.

Interesting point...

 

[Tatelina]

You never know, with the hormones fed to farmed meat poultry, you could end up with a 5 foot death adder that eats whole chickens...

Hahahaha!! Gawd imagine that!

 

[bitey]

Good luck.