Pregnant feeders? Please don't hate me...

So... If you wanted to try jumbo mice, but don't have any... what do you think about feeding a large pregnant mouse to a snake?

Is there more nutrition in such a meal? And if the mouse were ready to drop babies any day? It would be like an adult mouse with a big load of pinkies...

And if I get some flak for this potential atrocity, I'm JUST curious... What do you all think?

I think I read somewhere that pregnanct mice do offer my nutrition for a snake because of the fetuses she carries. I've fed pregnant mice to my snakes before and see nothing wrong with it. In fact I'll probably be doing it again tonight.

I'm not going to judge you...but I think it's terribly wasteful. Why not just wait a few weeks and you'll have so many more items to feed. It's easier for the snake to digest many smaller items than one big one and really, the fetuses (what the heck is that plural anyway) really don't offer any more than feeding pinkies to an adult snake...to which there is not much point. I say wait.

I agree. It seems extremely wasteful on an adult snake. Under-developed fetuses wouldn't offer enough nutrition to warrant feeding to an adult snake, and they'd best be served by waiting a week or so and feeding the mother to an adult, and the babies to whatever smaller snakes you have.

On the other hand, if you gotta, you gotta. I just fed off a ~21 day pregnant female last night. I got sick of her aggression towards me and made the decision I didn't want it potentially passing in her latest offspring.

When I get bit twice trying to remove newborns from a litter of fuzzies already in the colony...I won't tolerate it. So far that colony has lost two individuals in a week for that, the male and now her. When I poke the adults aside to harvest the "berries", I expect them to not interfere, and usually they don't. But these guys didn't read my manual obviously.

Fair enough - I just thought a BAG of pinkies and the mother would make for a booster shot - perhaps to weak or snakes whom have just laid a clutch?

But like I said I just wanted to "suss" out the possibility for more nutritous food items without keeping mice around for a year or more to make them jumbo sized. I live in the wonderful province of alberta (knowen for it's WONDERFUL drinking age of only 18) but it doesn't allow the raising of rats or purchasing of live rats - and because of this the price of frozen thawed rats (adults) is about 3.00/each. And it's not any cheaper to purchase younger than adult rats because you can really only buy dead adult rats from the universities.

Guess I'll have to search for outside of Alberta breeders then.

But just to make it clear - preg mother mouse wouldn't be as nutritious as equal sized rats, eh?

Thanks for your help guys!

The place i buy mice(dead) from often has pregnant ones in with the others so sometimes i just cant help feeding pregnant ones as its not me who choses them:shrugs: i can only tell because their stomachs, intsead of being white, have purple/pink skin under their fur.

I would imagine that 2 normal adults would be easier to digest than an equal biomass of mouse or rat because of the greater surface area:volume ratio.

I have a little supply of my old breeders from last year in the freezer that I think are too big a meal for most of my snakes but if I feed them 2 adults in 1 sitting, they're getting about the same weight of food.

It's much less stressful to the snake to digest 1 non-pregnant female and then feed him the babies later on when they're 4-5 weeks old....IMHO

It is my understanding that younger mice offer better nutrition than retired breeder mice. Apparently something to do with the calcium being depleted or not as available and they have just a lot more fatty tissue. The best mice to feed are weanlings or small adults. So it might be OK to feed the younger pregnant mice; but especially for the case of a breeding female snake, I would not feed an old breeder mouse, whether pregnant or not. Of course for an adult male snake or a pet snake, I think that would be OK to feed one an occasional retired breeder, unless they are overweight.

The best feeding regimen in my opinion for a breeding female corn is one weanling mouse, twice per week. The snake will not become obese and still she will get the maximum nutrition.

mark

moreptiles said:

The best feeding regimen in my opinion for a breeding female corn is one weanling mouse, twice per week. The snake will not become obese and still she will get the maximum nutrition.

mark

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Brilliant! I've been doing something like that. I feed 5 week old small mice and my snakes look nice and healthy...good to know I'm getting something right!