Posted by:
Tony D
at Mon Feb 1 13:04:28 2010 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Tony D ]
I understand that, many of those Frank mentored discount the use of vitamins outright.
I started using vitamins because of some poorly calcified eggs and the occasional egg binding. Though the eggs almost always hatched and I had remedies for egg binding I started thinking the problems were related to calcium uptake and if I was missing something relative to how nature "supports" egg laying snakes.
Ever wonder what it is about spring that "supports" breeding during that time? The list goes on and on but diet is rarely looked at. I hypothesized that it might be a factor. The idea went that by spring, seed predation is pretty near complete and rodent populations resort to eating shoots, leave, flowers and fruits. A diet consisting of actively growing (fresh) vegetation is much higher in beta-carotenes than a seed based diet. Seeds are basically a starch based storage devise and are not near the "whole" food that fresh vegetation is. Anyway these natural caroteniods, passed along as gut load, are also the biologic precursors for vitamin, A which is important in calcium metabolism. Couple this with spring time basking potentially increasing vitamin D3 synthesis (also necessary in calcium metabolism) and you begin to see a pattern that would "support" greater utilization of calcium for both shell formation and muscular contractions during egg deposition. When you look at it this way, there a significant dietary variation that wild snakes experience during the spring. Contrast this to the steady supply of domestic rodents mostly raised on grains (seed) crops and the potential for an issue becomes appearent. If nature could provide a shift in nutritional content, I though so could I.
In any case, since starting with the vitamins I haven't seen any under calcified eggs and I've only had one animal egg bind (a marginal sized female who I sold prior to suspecting she was gravid and had to ship).
The thing is we are admonished to observe and adjust and try new things. This is what I did for a particular set of minor problems and it appears to have worked. Are there other solutions, certainly yes, but its not just results that matter. The thought process that goes into what we do and the resultant increase in appreciation and understanding of the complexity of the natural world also counts.
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“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” Emmerson
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RE: My thoughts on keeping pyros... - Tony D, Mon Feb 1 13:04:28 2010