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Feeders Any and all issues about raising rats, mice, or anything else that you feed your cornsnakes.

The Great Reptilinks Experiment!
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Old 01-08-2016, 01:11 AM   #1
DuxorW
The Great Reptilinks Experiment!

I have decided to experiment with Reptilinks on some of my hatchlings and smaller corn snakes with the expectation that, since they are predicted to have up to twice the calories of the equivalent-sized rodent, I will see faster growth if I feed reptilinks on the same schedule as I would normally feed pinky mice. I do not anticipate any problems, as the links seem like they should be easy to digest.

I am not trying to powerfeed my snakes, but I do like to get them out of that more delicate hatchling phase and onto large fuzzies as as soon as I can. The advantage to these links is that they contain more calories in a similarly-sized package. I would not want to feed my hatchlings double pinks or larger pinks at this size out of fear of a regurge. I do not think this will be a problem with the links. In fact, if a snake does regurge a mouse, I wonder if the reptilinks, being easy to digest and containing more calories, might be beneficial to the snake until they can get back on mice?

You can learn more about the links at their website.

I plan on conducting the experiment using the following snakes. The phenotypes just serve as identifiers for me. The groups have roughly even mixtures of both males and females. The variability within the mouse-fed group will give me an idea of the extent of snake-to-snake variability in growth rate so that I can more accurately determine whether any increase in growth rate in the reptilink group is due to chance alone.

I will feed each animal every 7 days and record its weight before feeding. Thus I will calculate how much weight the snake gains with each feeding, as well as how long it takes each snake to grow from different milestones such as 50 to 100g.

Critically for the interpretation of the data, I will measure and record the weight of each mouse/reptilink meal and try to minimize the variation in food weight at each feeding.

Reptilink rabbit/chicken
Lava lavender m
Sk stripe f
Saffron f
Lava blood m
Orchid f
Pep stripe f1
Ero
Lava cinder
Pink snow
Sk amel f1

Mice group
Lava tess m
Sk hypo motley f
Pep stripe f2
Lava tess f
Sunkissed lava m
Ultramel okeetee f
Extreme ultramel f
Cinder motley
Sk amel f2
Sk bloodred stripe
 
Old 01-08-2016, 07:26 AM   #2
Christaberk
I'm intrigued. I truly am.

Because there are different types of Reptilinks (contents of the links vary) which one will you be using? I assume the rodent one, correct?
 
Old 01-08-2016, 08:47 AM   #3
Nanci
Interesting! I can't wait to see the results. To what weight do you anticipate continuing the study?
 
Old 01-08-2016, 09:58 AM   #4
DuxorW
Quote:
Originally Posted by Christaberk View Post
I'm intrigued. I truly am.

Because there are different types of Reptilinks (contents of the links vary) which one will you be using? I assume the rodent one, correct?
I am using the rabbit mini links, which actually only come in rabbit. The rabbit links also have fewer calories than the other links such as venison, and in their tests did not have a much higher calorie content than their mouse sample. However, they presumably were not using a pinky mouse as their sample, and I bet the rabbit mini links have way more calories than a pinky mouse which seem like fleshy water balloons to me. But it's possible I will not see a significant increase in growth with the links.

I ordered the 8-12g rabbit/chicken blend links because they were on sale. They don't have calorie info for this blend.
 
Old 01-08-2016, 10:03 AM   #5
DuxorW
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nanci View Post
Interesting! I can't wait to see the results. To what weight do you anticipate continuing the study?
I'm not sure. There is a transition between pinky and hopper mice where the links may not be very cost effective: the links jump from 3-4 grams to 8-12 grams. So at one point I may have to feed 1.5 links in order for the prey to be the same size as what the mouse group is getting. But I did order a lot of "pinky" and "hopper" links...
 
Old 01-09-2016, 08:19 PM   #6
DuxorW
Edited the original post with two new groups for the hopper-sized links.
 
Old 01-14-2016, 08:22 PM   #7
DuxorW
This turns out not to be a straightforward as I thought! I initially had a very promising result with the links but I think it will take a long time to evaluate whether there is a difference.

For example, it appeared that the cinder motley gained about 4 grams after eating an 8g hopper, based on his weight this morning (88g). But I weighed him right before feeding and he was 97g! I suppose he could have gulped down a lot of water (I changed it today) but that seems like a lot.

Some of the reptilink animals pooped again and it altered the numbers substantially. So the only point of this update is to say I probably won't update this post after every feeding, I expect that a trend won't emerge until after several feelings.

Further, according to their website, there are 1614 calories/kg in the rabbit links and 1347 calories per kg of mouse. That translates to 1.6 calories per gram of rabbit link and 1.35 calories per gram of mouse. Assuming that we believe this analysis, the claim that the links contain twice the calories of the equivalent rodent is misleading (if not dishonest) for the rabbit links. The number of calories is probably even lower in the chicken/rabbit blend that I am using. It is really the venison links that appear to have almost twice the calories as a mouse of the same size. Thus I no longer necessarily expect that I will see increased growth rate, but I hope to be surprised.
 
Old 02-07-2016, 01:50 PM   #8
DuxorW
It turns out that after a few feedings I saw nothing that makes me think the chicken and rabbit links make the snakes grow any faster than mice. The average weight gain over the period was 5-6g (with the animals fed mice having a tiny but likely statistically insignificant advantage in growth rate). I'll need more links soon to continue the experiment but didn't get any preliminary result that makes me think it is worth it. Given that the rabbit+chicken links have among the lowest calorie count among the different kinds of links, I imagine that is the culprit. The venison links have the highest (if memory serves, almost twice as many calories), and although I'm sure they are fine nutritionally, I think it's weird to feed deer to snakes!
 
Old 02-07-2016, 02:11 PM   #9
BeauBoi
Quote:
Originally Posted by DuxorW View Post
It turns out that after a few feedings I saw nothing that makes me think the chicken and rabbit links make the snakes grow any faster than mice. The average weight gain over the period was 5-6g (with the animals fed mice having a tiny but likely statistically insignificant advantage in growth rate). I'll need more links soon to continue the experiment but didn't get any preliminary result that makes me think it is worth it. Given that the rabbit+chicken links have among the lowest calorie count among the different kinds of links, I imagine that is the culprit. The venison links have the highest (if memory serves, almost twice as many calories), and although I'm sure they are fine nutritionally, I think it's weird to feed deer to snakes!
I am glad someone is studying them side-by-side with mice. I tried them when they first came out, but in all honesty I just didn't see the point. Mice are cheaper, and are a whole food source that the snake has evolved to eat (as opposed to rabbit or deer). None the less, I have been following your read and am interested to see the end results.
The only real reasons I have seen thus far for someone switching to the links are:
(1) the "yuck factor" of feeding mice/rats (doesn't bother me in the least, but I realize that there are people who it affects)
(2) availability issues in areas without easy access to rodents (which has thankfully decreased with the advent of the online frozen/thawed market

Thanks again! Look forward to your posts!
~Beau
 
Old 02-08-2016, 11:18 PM   #10
Kevin S.
The rabbit links don't have twice as many calories per their nutritional chart, but they do have about 5% more protein and once the casing is digested, would presumably break down and be assimilated much more completely since it's just ground meat with more surface area. Mice with incisions in the skin lead to faster growth rates in corns since they digest more easily/completely. For that reason, I wouldn't be surprised if the snakes eating links grow faster even if calories, protein, and all other relevant factors are the same between the groups. There are a number of factors that could skew results in the short term, so don't lose hope yet. You're off to such a good start that I'd hate to see you quit before the results are apparent. I think if you stick with it another month or two, you'll see a more dramatic trend.

P.S. I couldn't find any nutritional information on their website for the chicken+rabbit links. Where did you see that it has the fewest calories?
 

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