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Old 11-02-2017, 12:51 PM   #10
Rich Z
Quote:
Originally Posted by Strikealight View Post
Well, IMHO given that these snakes eat pretty much nothing but mice; that they have evolved to an extremely high degree to detect and seek out rodents; that they have the inherent ability to get onto nooks and crannies where rodents have their nests; that given their diet they occur where there are concentrations of rodents; and that hatchling corn snakes in the wild are entirely on their own and must hunt out food or they die... I would say the chances are pretty good!
I seriously doubt that a baby corn snake would find a nest of baby mice undefended by the mother. And that the mother mouse would just stand by and allow that to happen.

Interestingly enough many years ago when I was working for the Florida Legislature, a coworker mentioned that he had caught a baby corn snake several weeks ago. In the discussion I asked him where he was getting his pinky mice from to feed it. The guy looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. So I had to explain what "pinky" mice actually were. His expression didn't change. He told me that he was feeding it earthworms, which it was readily feeding upon. I had honestly never considered, prior to that incident, earthworms as being a food source for baby corn snakes. But obviously they were.

Honestly, I've never tried to feed a baby corn earthworms myself. One reason being is that I always had a steady supply of one day old pinky mice. The second reason is that earthworms are just not as common where I live as you would think they should be. The soil here is mostly sand. When I lived in Maryland, any time you stuck as shovel in the ground, you would pull up several earthworms in the dirt. Here, it is relative rare to find one.