Feeding your snake

sambo

Found this quite interesting for any of you that do have snakes.

Beware Of Live Rodents

I highly recommend that you feed your rodent-eating snakes frozen/thawed food animals. If you must feed your snake live food animals, don't leave a rodent running around in the snake's cage unattended, especially if the snake isn't showing interest in eating. Rodents quickly realize when a snake isn't in a feeding mood or condition (like if a snake is sick, too cold, stressed, shedding), and they will take advantage of that. Very serious damage, even death of the snake, can result because debilitated snakes often aren't able to adequately defend themselves against a hungry rodent. At the very least, you should put some rodent chow into the snake cage for the rodent to eat if you are planning to leave a rodent and a snake together unattended.

Even though you may be right there watching the feeding process, it only takes a fraction of a second for a rodent to inflict a painful bite or scratch on your snake, and that can cause serious problems. Most pet snakes take to eating frozen/thawed rodents easily, but it's well worth the effort to get even stubborn snakes started on eating dead food.

There are other reasons to use frozen/thawed rodents for snake food instead of feeding pet snakes live animals. For one, frozen/thawed food is much less likely to transmit parasites to your pet snake.

gizmo

i whant a snake but my sis is scared of them!!!!!!!!!!!!! Smile

sambo

I wouldn't say i'm scared of them i just dont like the look of them Laughing

pollaton

as far as i am aware in england sambo you aren't allowed to feed live food to your reptile....that was always the impression i got from the reptile owners that used to come in the petstore.

although, we had a young man who bought a rat then a few days later he came cback and bought a second. when he came in for his 3rd i got suspicious and questioned him, it became apparent that he wasn't purchasing them for pets. he didn't buy another one from us.

Fizzyon

hey i love snakes im not scared of em but mum wont let me Crying or Very sad

studdette64

Very good advice sambo I am glad that you are sharing that information to the people of your site. I made the mistake of not seeing the rat that we fed to our boa, thinking that she had eaten it. In the morning we looked in on her and found that during the night the rat had been eating on the snake. She required 216 stitches 4.5 hours to accomplish this and 10 days of administering antibiotic shots. She was unable to be placed under sedation because they didnt think she would wake up. It also took me awhile to find a veterinarian that would even take her on because she was a snake. I had to hold her during the whole procedure because no one other then the dr would work with the 9.5 ft boa. One recommendation that I would give to people and I practice this, if you are going to feed live animals to your snake TAKE EVERYTHING OUT of the cage until the animal has been consumed, make sure you watch to ensure that it definitely was consumed. Removing everything makes it easier for the snake to attack and less places for the "food" to hide and less distractions for the snake. It also lets the snake know that it is feeding time and to get ready.

catmad

Wow, that's awful - I've actually never heard of this and had no idea! We used to keep a common brown housesnake who we would feed lizzards to, and occasionally baby mice (I could hardly bring myself to do the mice bit so my dad would do it). The lizzards would admittedly sometimes try and bite the snake while he was constricting around it, but the lizzards didn't have teeth so we weren't concerned.

sambo

Sorry to hear about your snake studette i just hope the information on this site is usefull to all our members.

Glad you think it is Wink

Do you still have your snake i would love to see a pic Smile

studdette64

Sorry no pictures. We had to move and couldn't keep her they considered her an exotic animal. I found a very loving home that was very excited to get her. We have moved since and now I have the ball python.

pollaton

have you got pics of your python studette. please

adam

I have a corn snake

micki

there is absolutely no excuse for feeding live food to a snake.. i have to question anyone who does.it may take time but every snake will adapt to frozen food.

whallj

Should never feed live food to snakes as a bite from a rodent can seriously hurt a snakes can cost a hefty vet bill and it's not worth the risk with live food.

I only feed my two rat snakes frozen food as it's safer, but if the snake/s only takes live food one way to stop live food Wink

is braining.

I had to do that with my Yellow rat snake due to not eating rats/mice so i exposed the brain of a rat or mouse which was frozen.