This topic comes up a fair bit and it's a pretty typical case of everyone having a firm belief without any empirical evidence, so I'm doing some preliminary trials.
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. People sometimes use chicken wings or necks as supplementary feeds to save money or to fill in when rodents are out of supply, and many people believe this is unhealthy.
If anyone has already done any experimenting, please get in touch to prevent me from reinventing the wheel! I have snakes currently gobbling down tails, legs, meat, etc and in a year or so I should have some worthwhile data (or sooner if things turn sour!).
Please note that feeding a snake half a dozen 'meat and bone' meals doesn't prove anything at all. Doing it for a year or so means something, and having a snake grow from baby to adult exclusively on meat and bone is what we need to try.
Cheers
Sdaji
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. People sometimes use chicken wings or necks as supplementary feeds to save money or to fill in when rodents are out of supply, and many people believe this is unhealthy.
If anyone has already done any experimenting, please get in touch to prevent me from reinventing the wheel! I have snakes currently gobbling down tails, legs, meat, etc and in a year or so I should have some worthwhile data (or sooner if things turn sour!).
Please note that feeding a snake half a dozen 'meat and bone' meals doesn't prove anything at all. Doing it for a year or so means something, and having a snake grow from baby to adult exclusively on meat and bone is what we need to try.
Cheers
Sdaji