Hi VanPerry, Its not about a soap box, its about helping people get over the hurdle of simplistic husbandry.
In nature, all but the strongest are culled. Culled means, killed off by natural selection. Genotypes are the genetics of a local animal. Phenotype is genotype after natural selection. The animal that exsists at the time. To exist means to FEED when the opportunity presents itself. That has been culled for, for tens of thousands of years. Its hard wired survival. to feed.
If there is a soapbox its you guys that blame animals for not doing well and you keep them in tiny boxes. My PROBLEM is, I see them wild and free. I also keep them in boxes. I do understand what I do in captivity is LESS, then they have in nature. Much less.
Whats missing here is you folks want to defend LESS. Sir, there is no rule in recipe husbandry that states you cannot add more, or change it to fit individuals. In fact, all keepers that understand husbandry know recipes are a place to START.
When I was young, I had the same problems, heres a tiny story. I had one of the original albino and het az. gophersnakes. One animal was kept by others for seven years(a female het) It was 18 inches long. It was given to me to help with the project. It would not feed worth a crap in a cage, I got so fed up, I let it out. Loose in the house it ate like a pig, one night I heard it rustling around in the trash. It was attempting to swallow the foam part of a steak container. Another night, it attempted to eat my girlfriend. It had her by the shoulder and was constricting her. hahahahahahahahaha it knew something I did not know about her, hahahahahahahahaha
I could roll chicken eggs on the floor and it would chase them and grab them. But back in my silly cages, picky. So I learned a a lesson. MY cages do not have to be right, even if they worked with some other gophersnakes.
In captivity its a balance of how much can we take away from them and still have them survive. part 1

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