snake steaks?

Hi guys,
I have a friend from another forum who wants a snake but does not want to have to keep mice (live or frozen). I told her that I had heard about snake steaks or snake sausages, but so far I have not been able to find many opinions on here about them.
I was not sure what to look for and my searches for older threads did not lead to much helpful information. I remember someone posting pictures of their snake eating snake steaks (or whatever brand name they used) awhile back. Can anybody point me in the right direction or share their personal experience? Thanks

I don't have any experience with them, but I wouldn't use them.
Imagine a mouse, living and healthy. It probably has a certain ammount of bacteria in it's gut, a certain ammount on it's skin and fur. Bacteria which it's little mousey body has evolved to keep out of it's meaty tissue. Kill that mouse and freeze it and you've got a pretty good example of what a snake has evolved to eat. (Once thawed and not temperature abused- ie- left out in the sun for a long time..)
Now imagine a mouse with a certain ammount of bacteria on it's skin and in it's gut, ground up into a paste so that the bacteria gets mixed up throughout. Not too bad, but add to that the additional time in the temperature that bacteria love (while processing) and the fact that the grinder probably has done another mouse before this one (and another and another) so bacteria has been working on those surfaces even longer...

If they add a preservative, I think that's a pretty unnatural bit of snake food. If they don't, I don't know, that might be even worse.

Then you think about the cost. If it's more expensive than mice (which the snakes love and do well on) I would leave it for it's cost. If it costs less than mice, I would worry that there might be some unhealthy filler involved. After all, they had to come up with mice, process them and stuff them into some kind of skin. After all that, somethings fishy if they are cheaper than mice.

*No offense to anyone who might work in the snake sausage industry, or who might feed them to their snakes, just my opinion..*
:cheers:

if i remember correctly it is, or was, a T-Rex product. I tried to find somewhere to order them after seeing them in kathy love's book. i ended up calling the company and they said they discontinued them until further notice because they moved to another facility.

Kathy Love mentions them in the Cornsnake Manual. It basically says that she fed her snakes on them for awhile, and decided they could maintain them. Other than that, I don't remember the passage. If you haven't picked up the book yet, I would head to your local library.

I have the orriginal blue one, my local pet and book stores are a little behind the times. I'll have to special order the newer one, I just didn't really want to have to mess with shipping.

thanks for the replies guys. :cheers:

Personally, I wouldn't try them. I don't remember where now, but a while back I read some articles which suggested that it could be hard to get the snake to recognise them as food and eat them, and also that there was some uncertainty about how digestable they were and what actually makes up the "sausage."

Something for your friend to consider - occasionally a snake will just stop eating. Occasionally it may be necessary to try different prey items or even live food to get a snake to eat. Is your friend willing to do this? Or, let's say she buys the snake and finds that it doesn't accept the sausages - what will she do then?

I'm not trying to put anyone off this product, some people probably have used them successfully. I just feel that mice kind of come with the territory if you're serious about owning a snake.

Plissken said:

I just feel that mice kind of come with the territory if you're serious about owning a snake.

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Agreed. Will this friend be able to brain a pink if necessary?

If the product is still available (haven't checked in a couple of years, so don't know), it may take some training to get them to accept the sausages (scenting them with real mice), although some may take them right away and some may never take them.

I discussed it with the originator of the product, and he said they maintained a colubrid colony on nothing but the sausages from yearling size through becoming breeding adults (if my memory is correct). He said they stayed healthy on the diet without supplements.

So I do believe corns would stay healthy on the diet, but it is important to note that you will have to be prepared to stock frozen or even live pinks if that is required to keep the snake healthy.

catsapp said:

Hi guys,
I have a friend from another forum who wants a snake but does not want to have to keep mice (live or frozen). I told her that I had heard about snake steaks or snake sausages, but so far I have not been able to find many opinions on here about them.
I was not sure what to look for and my searches for older threads did not lead to much helpful information. I remember someone posting pictures of their snake eating snake steaks (or whatever brand name they used) awhile back. Can anybody point me in the right direction or share their personal experience? Thanks

Click to expand...

To be honest, I was also very iffy about feeding mice, at first.
I looked very seriously into the snake sausages, and decided it was pretty iffy:
just really difficult to find them, and I wasn't sure about nutrition and I knew that if the snake didn't take them, I'd have to switch around anyways.

I still would never be able to feed live (i'd rather brain, slit, cut, scent or whatever than that, i'm not sure why) ,
but eventually my love of snakes overcame my hesitation to buy frozen mice.

A couple things to help her get over it, if she really wants a snake:

- Have her think about frozen chicken in her freezer. Can she deal with raw people food, such as steak or fish or chicken? It's really no different at all. Probably in some cases, cleaner. And in most cases, way more humane, considering how chickens are processed.

- Keep the frozen mice in an opaque tupperware container with "SNKAE FOOD" written on it, so that no one unwaringly opens it, and you don't have to look at the dead mice in your freezer. Alternatively, keep them in an opaque shopping bag in a clear tupperware container, to the same effect.

- Start of with a small snake, eating pinky mice. I found ...personally, that pinkies look less like "eww dead mice" and more like... mice shaped pink things. I don't know. Once I got over feeding these weird mice shaped pink things, feeding frozen mice didn't seem so daunting.


As mentioned before, I would let her decide whether she wants a snake enough to deal with all the responsibilities involved. Snake steaks are an option, but they shouldn't be restricting the health of the snake- what happens if she moves and the snake steaks become harder to obtain?
Feeding frozen mice will likely be cheaper, and once you get used to it, not that bad.

Good luck!

"snake food" not "snkae food" lol.

Thank you again for the replies, I really appreciate it.
I think we may have talked her into frozen thawed, but i passed along the information you guys gave and posted a link to this thread just in case.
I feed all my guys frozen thawed, as do several of the members of our local group. We were just brainstorming about what else was out there and I remembered hearing/reading something about those. nobody else knew much about them so I decided to ask here. :cheers:
thanks again