Nutritionally complete sausage-type food substitutes - your thoughts?

[chia44]

I agree, it sounds like you have thought about the needs of the snake, and the options available to you. I personally couldn't do the grinding and filling of casings, but I would say if you froze them right away there would be no need to cook.

I also think that cooking might not only take out some nutrients, but it might turn off your snake(s) to eating them. IDK that they would have an appetite for cooked mouse/rat.

I think it is important for people to think outside the box, and to look into alternatives. While I don't disagree with people who say that it is somewhat natural the way we do it now, that doesn't mean that there isn't a valuable change on the horizon.

 

[vetusvates]

I have always wondered about vitamins, supplements, calcium, etc.
Especially in the sense that baby corns like to feed on anoles in the wild. There would be much more calcium (and complex proteins) in even a sub-adult anole than in pinkies. Hmmm....I wonder what a study would yield.
Incidentally, in years of experience with WC black rat and texas rat snakes, the heads are much larger in proportion to the bodies than many corns I see pictured on the internet. But I do not know the "proper" size a corn's head should be, based on length/weight.
However, only a proper scientific study would convince me that WC's have not matured differently on a wild type diet. That would go for any CB versus WC species.

Incidentally, any type of cooking is going to break down the larger molecular nutrients. That's why cooked meat is more tender than raw meat. The difference between steak medium-well and steak tartare.

 

[Ssthisto]

And the cooking would guarantee the lack of parasites and disease transmission if appropriately handled. Pressure cooking ought to help preserve shape and do the least damage to the quality of the food, I'd think.

To be completely honest I'd rather *avoid* cooking them if possible - I'm worried about the nutritional value of the gut contents being lost.

Funny enough, I asked a home sausagemaking supply company over here if they did teeny tiny sausage casings; I didn't really think I would get an answer because I did tell 'em I wanted to make sausages as a nutritional supplement for my snakes. They did actually respond - and they've suggested rabbit (but unfortunately don't have any rabbit gut). Now it looks like I'll have to look into butchers who work with rabbit

They may do ok on anoles, quail chicks, etc., but the preferred prey is rodentia in nature and I expect they tend that way for a reason.

Note I'm still wanting to feed them rodents - just not immature fatty ones as the main diet of a juvenile snake. Doing adult-quail sausages would be something they'd get occasionally but not regularly, the same as my adult corns now occasionally get a day-old chick, but not regularly.

I don't think I'd be feeding exclusively sausage by any means - simply because any hatchlings destined for sale would HAVE to be willing to eat the more commercially available prey - not everyone's a nutter who's willing to get a sausage grinder and make little tiny mousausages. It'd certainly be interesting to compare length and weight gain on animals that are fed "ground up adult prey" or "whole juvenile prey".

First off let me say that, I think it is a wonderful idea! I say go for it, and more importantly report back to us on your results!

It'll all be dependent on whether I can get appropriately sized casings for *baby* snake food. You see, when it comes to feeding adult snakes, I don't need to grind up adult prey items to make them a size that the snake can eat - they're already the size I need. It's getting casings to grind up adult prey items into for snakes eating pinky-sized, fuzzy-sized or hopper-sized mice (the latter two I can probably do - chipolata sausage casings made from lamb gut would be about right) that's going to be an adventure.

In my opinion it's the same concept as using dog food instead of table scraps and prey items. This nature argument doesn't hold water with me! By nature my dog would be catching live rabbits, squirrels, deer ect. and eating them raw. So by nature I guess I should feed my dog live rabbits? If you want "natural" you should feed live prey to your snakes too, right?

Now, that said, I think dogs *should* be fed whole raw prey too ... because kibbled dog food is to a dog's natural diet what ground-chicken-and-rusk sausages would be to a snake's natural diet. Dead guts-bones-and-all prey is better for both carnivorous species than "throw a pile of cheap grain into it, give it some meat flavouring, add in the nutrients that cooking kills, then call it a complete diet."

I do rather wish my cats would eat defrosted rodents, too.

But I don't have an objection to *improving* on nature. Nature says that most of the babies in a clutch of corns will die before they breed; I'd rather do better than that. But Nature also says "baby corns seek out adult prey items too - they just don't happen to be *mice*."

On another side note I think a baby, whatever species, has way higher caloric needs per body weight than an adult. ... Babies need more calories than adults to compensate for there growth, in most species anyways.

I'll keep that in mind - should I do this experiment (i.e. I find the right casings to do the sausages - I am still hoping not to have to cook them) I'll supplement the "sausage eaters" with whole pink mice as well - maybe a 25% pinkies / 75% sausage or 50/50 pink to sausage ratio. Maybe I'll get lucky and have enough baby corns hatch out this year or next that I can do a proper study of it - separate each clutch into four groups, feed one group (the ones I'm keeping myself) on only sausage, one group on only pink mice, and two groups that are fed either more sausage/fewer pinks or more pinks/fewer sausage.

I have always wondered about vitamins, supplements, calcium, etc.
Especially in the sense that baby corns like to feed on anoles in the wild. There would be much more calcium (and complex proteins) in even a sub-adult anole than in pinkies.

Exactly - because the anoles have a much more varied diet, their gut contents are going to be more nutritious too. Same goes for an adult mouse - much more varied diet (especially when you know exactly what your mice are eating) and therefore more vitamins and minerals.

 

[kathylove]

I think Mother Nature probably intended cats to eat whole, raw, small rodents, and people to eat raw plants of many kinds, with an occasional chunk of raw meat when we could get it. But humans, in our infinite wisdom and love of convenience, have come up with all kinds of tasty, quick, convenient, and cheap methods of feeding ourselves and our pets. Most of the time it works out pretty well, if we choose the types of foods that appear to be well balanced. But given human nature, I think that prepared snake food is inevitable, and will actually give the hobby a big boost from those who can't deal with whole mice. Although a QUALITY prepared food may not be EXACTLY the same as whole, healthy rodents, I bet it will compare VERY favorably with the average human diet in supplying nutritional needs of each respective species!

I have experimented on a very unscientific basis for many years in offering various homemade liquid diets to "problem" corns. I have found that egg yolk works pretty well, and cat food worked, at least for the short term. I am currently using a ferret food which is supposed to analyze the same as a young adult mouse ( gram per gram, on a dry weight basis). I have had some pretty good success using it for non-feeders. I would really like to do a more scientific experiment, using a group of a couple of clutches of babies, divided in half, with one group eating pinks and one getting ferret food via tube. But it would mean a lot of weighing, measuring, and making sure I follow very strict schedules, all during a very busy time of the year. So I probably won't get around to it again this year. But I would like to eventually see a viable, commercial snake diet some day.

Once a nutritionally complete diet is found, then we need to concentrate on getting into a form that a snake would voluntarily learn to eat, such as a sausage, or maybe a hard gelatin type of food such as the "Bites" made by one company. Of course, it might have to be dipped in "mouse sauce" to convince the snake to partake of it!

 

[carnivorouszoo]

I just have to say if the milk given by the mother mice is so "nutritionally faulted" as you make it sound then how on earth are those babies growing? I mix my own mouse feed. I know every scrap they get. No I can not analyze to give percentages of what they eat each day but as nutritionists say "you get balance via variety over time, not by swallowing a tablet each day." I can not see the baby mice not getting appropriate nutrients, and therefore passing on said nutrients by being fed to another animal.

Tip to get your cats on a raw diet. Start by offering canned food. When they eat that and for the most part ignore kibble, use a grinder to add some raw meat with small soft bone, for example chicken wing (do not fear bone splinters only cooked bones splinter dangerously). Slowly give the mix with more ground raw until there is no canned food. Then slowly leave it more and more intact until they are eating the wing whole. Of course they will chew but you know what I mean. When they are good with that try offering the mice. I assure you they will take it

 

[Ssthisto]

Mouse milk is nutritious - for baby mice that are supposed to be living off of mouse milk.

That doesn't mean it's nutritious for something that isn't evolved to eat that many neonate mice.

I would offer my cats a more wet diet - except that both of them are prone to tooth problems if I try that (and indeed someone wonderful down the road from us has been feeding our cats milk-and-sugar which has resulted in Jonesy losing the majority of his teeth). Far as it goes, these two will be kept on their current diet - but if I ever had another cat from kittenhood it would be fed a raw-prey diet.

Kathy, that ferret-food idea sounds like a brilliant one - I wonder if that could be packed into sausage casings That said, it would depend on whether the brand exists over here in the UK as to whether I could try it at all.

 

[kathylove]

It is the Natural Gold ferret food from Pretty Pet. I talked with the owner of the company a year or two ago and he suggested it. He said that ferrets are totally carnivorous - more so than cats. He said that he feels ferrets have health problems in captivity mainly because ferret foods have too much carbohydrate in them, and that is unnatural for ferrets. So they analyzed mice of different ages, and decided to go with everything they could find (nutrient wise) in a young, adult mouse. He said it keeps ferrets healthy, and should keep other carnivorous animals healthy, too.

I put it through a coffee grinder to grind it up as finely as possible. Then I let it soak in water for a while. I still have to push it through a tea strainer because there are always a few gritty pieces that get stuck in small feeding tubes. I would love to have them offer it in a finely ground state. Then we could use it via tube, or put it in sausage casings. Wonder what would happen if you put the dry powder in casings for storage, and then just soaked them prior to feeding? Maybe they would be malleable enough to sort of shape them the way you want them shaped?

 

[danielmcginty]

I rarely post, just read, but rat sausages-yeah Ssthisto!
I've had this idea for months and months. In the UK anyway, it makes sense- If you could divide the large 600 gram rats down to smaller packages you'd be saving a fortune. Plus you'd get them fresh grind em down then freeze as sausages. I did it and here are the pros, cons & uncertaintys I found;
Blender from Argos £8-bargain! But the smell is bad, I can take most things, but its quite extreme 'the coppery blood' odour was too much even in the sheds so I had to do it on the patio.(I was dreading the nosy, elderly neighbours popping their heads over the fence enquiring as to what I was doing!!!!!)
The bones weren't a problem, non existent infact, but the tail and skin just get caught around the blades, I tried chopping it up the first time but I wouldn't recommend it as when I was putting it through the machine (manual) and into the casings it often became difficult to turn and seperate the sausages as the pieces were still quite big.
As you mentioned I couldn't find smaller casings than around 12 ml I think, but if you push out the air with half the amount of meat in the skins in you can get smaller, mis-shapen sausages which baby corns could eat (I didnt try feeding babies though. I think I was slightly hesitant whether they could process the meat collagen casing through their systems, looking back now I think thats a bit of stupid concern.)
One slightly disgusting side effect is that the casings are (obviously) porous so its a bit minging getting that onto your fingers all the time.
The corns I fed weren't that receptive - only about a 1/4 ate them but I only tried the once-so this points a bit redundant, you could convert em.

Issues I thought of were that adult rats have a higher fat content in their body, still using 400 gramers wouldn't be a problem, also rats have less calcium % than mice and younger rats if I remember correctly (all the stats are on rodentpro.com) so I also put calcium powder in a few, which was good as it thickened up the product.

I'd definately recommend having a go. Personally I found it all a bit too disgusting, but I'm sure I'll try it again sometime soon as the memory fades, next time I think I'd make the sausages individually as I had a hella lot of problems tying them up too. I think it would be good to try and make actual sausages to see what the consistency of the meat is.

DEFINATELY let me know how it goes for you though, please pm me, as I find the premise fascinating.:dgrin: