Hi there,

You did good by asking about this before making a decision. There have been dozens of great threads on this forum over the years, and I wish I had saved them all. I'll give you the bottom line about rodents and easterns and save you all of that reading.



You may have heard/read about liver problems, but you haven't seen any proof! This is an urban legend based entirely on conjecture. ANY ANIMAL that is subject to starving can develop fatty liver disease. FLD is NOT caused by eating too much fat! As we all know, Heterodon sp tend to go off feed for virtually no reason, and that goes for amphibian fed ones as well.



There have been people on here who were quick to blame the death of their eastern on a rodent diet (I remember a person that blamed it on the ONE mouse that he fed his snake). Yet, none of these people have provided necropsies, nor do we know anything about the health of animal before it died, or of it's captive care. So at that point, it's all conjecture, and completely uneducated guess.



>> I have seen very few posts about the potential health problems with a rodent only diet for a amphibian specialized snake.



Yeah, that's because there isn't any information. There are dozens of NA native snakes that are not rodent specialists that only get rodents in captivity, where's the controversy on those snakes?



>>If a frog diet is desired, is it feasible to commercially purchase frogs much the same way a person would mice?



As far as I know, no there isn't. The only ones you will find are WC and are the farthest thing from being the healthy food choice you are looking for.



In the past, I have dug around really hard looking for evidence either way, and I couldn't find any. When I was a curator, I wanted to know if the eastern that had been fed rodents for 11 years would be harmed.



I would also suggest a varied diet, since amphibians only comprise ~50% of an eastern's diet. They eat a lot of insects. I've been able to get easterns to eat cockroaches, crickets, and even Mazuri gel diet for herps.
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"The irrational fear of snakes is the only excuse a grown man has... to act like a complete sissy" - Colchicine

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