I worked at a zoo for a while. They had something called fast Friday. They would not feed the Birds of Prey, felids, wolves or bears on Friday to mimic a fasting that they would encounter in the wild. These animals also encounter disease in the wild but it doesn't mean it is healthy. That is what I would call a bad captive verses wild analogy. You say it is bad for me to feed more than one or two mice weekly because it can cause liver problems. Overfeeding is not a cause of liver failure.

Fasting is the cause of Hepatic Lipidosis. When an animal does not eat and starts to use it's fat reserve the fat gets trapped in the liver causing liver failure in some animals. Hepatic Lipidosis has not been proven to cause problems in reptiles especially ones that brumate.

Hognose have an abundance of food sources compared to other snakes of North America. They eat almost anything. They eat toads, frogs, lizards, snakes, birds, mice and who knows what else? I'm sure that they go without food sometimes but that does not mean it is healthy. After all those little toads go away where do they go? Just because you can't see them doesn't mean that they are gone. I'm sure most of them die, but some live a while underground waiting to be eaten. But like you said we shouldn't compare wild hognose to captives. I think that is true for now so let's move on.

I feed my hogs what they want. It is a lot more than what people think is healthy. I think it is because they have some kind of old school knowledge about how a snake only needs to eat once a week and can go months without eating. And all of that knowledge came from ? I get my info from my hogs, it's all I got. They are healthy. I don't have problems with them eating because I don't starve them. Hognose keepers can do what they like. If they want to go by what they read on the net that's fine. I would recommend they turn off the computer and watch the populations they have at home because it would be impossible to get real data from wild hognose regarding feeding habits.

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