I have learned a lot here about chickens and how they relate to a repiles' diet. Until now I had to rely on my experiences and base my practices on a working common sense and to a smaller degree,... guesswork. But I have always assumed (in recent years, not long ago) that freshly killed, healthy chickens would have a lower Salmonella "count" or "parts per million" than one that had been killed and frozen, or found dead and appeared "fresh". I always figured that the living chickens would have a working resistance to the natural Salmonella in their systems and would thus have a natural balance that maintained a low level of it. But once killed, the Salmonella would have no opposition to its multiplication efforts and it would thus thrive. Ergo; A Salmonella infested chicken after considerable time (couple hours? several hours in ideal temperatures?). Because like all bacteria, Salmonella multiplies at a geometric rate, so the time between moderate levels and total infestation would be short.



I have also always known/suspected (again, in recent years) that when frozen, Salmonella merely remains in a "suspended state" and upon thaw, reanimates and begins to multiply. I based this on the universal need to thoroughly cook even once frozen chicken intended for human consumption.



So with all of this added up, I have avoided using chickens in my snakes' diet since 1990. My logic has been along the lines of,... if there is even minimal risk,.. why take the chance? But now,.... to not only read of those that do feed them with no apparent ill-effects,... but to also get otherwise solid info that validates my best case estimations of safe levels of Salmonella in living chickens,... now I feel I can safely feed personally raised chickens to suppliment my pythons' (and boas) diet.



And to those with a lot of snakes that don't have huge parcels of land,... if you think it's difficult to raise up chickens, it really isn't and it doesn't take a lot of space or time. I used to do it on a fairly large scale in the 80's. You don't even have to maintain or breed adults. The simplest way to do this is to buy surplus cockerels from a local chicken breeder and to raise them up. It's cheap and easy and you end up with lots of snake food costing you roughly 30 cents a pound worst case scenario. If anyone wants me to expand on exactly how to do this I can post a seperate thread about it and go into detail. Let me know.



As for your lost post Marcia,... man,. that does suck. It happened to me once about a month ago. It seems that when a post takes a considerable length of time that the kingsnake website re-requires ones' password, and so all text is lost. So now, whenever I have a post that is longer than a paragraph or two (like this one) I copy it with my mouse in case that ever happens again. This was actually my wife's idea, to give her due credit for a great idea that is seemingly simple, yet the obviousness of it escaped me . So if it ever dumps my post, I can simply repaste my text. So you may want to consider trying this.



Again, thanks for all this useful data. Keep it coming.





>>This is long and winding but I hope useful: First, I apologize for the delay in this post. I replied to the original thread Friday morning, but after spending close to three hours looking for the links to back up my message- it did not post That was probably my fault- at the time I was working on little sleep.

>>The recent study I spoke about has not been published. I cannot provide a link. It was discussed with me in a personal conversation with a poultry nutritionist in Iowa. The link that I can provide (one of several but I don't have the time to search for all of them again right now) is the study that brought me to ask the questions about salmonella at the farm level. It is a surprising study with some insight for this subject though it was conducted on hogs by the University of Illinois. Most salmonella studies begin at the processing plant. Very few begin at the farm- only a couple to my knowledge, but this isn't my field. That said, I have only a lay persons understanding of disease and risk factors- my knowledge has been acquired through personal readings and personal interviews.

>>http://nationalhogfarmer.com/ar/farming_antibiotic_resistance_theories/index.htm

>>

>>The reason most studies begin at the processing plant (the landmark WHO study, for instance) is that salmonella is endemic to factory farm operations and these studies are conducted for human disease risk, so the processing plant is the logical starting point. Chickens, like reptiles, can manage well with salmonella and other supposedly harmful bacteria in their systems. It is only when the butchering process begins that the bacteria explodes in growth. Once dead, the carcass is exposed to many conditions at the processing plant that spread salmonella from carcass to carcass and even from infected workers to clean carcasses. Salmonella is handled within the human consumption market by cooking (as someone mentioned- people in parts of the U.S. eat all sorts of wild prey but humans cook it first). Freezing doesn't kill salmonella. Never refreeze a chicken if a reptile refuses it. Salmonella goes dormant in a frozen state but it returns to life and multiplies when thawed. Each time you thaw, you essentially have a carcass with more bacteria. A chicken, thawed for the first time, has a moderate amount of salmonella. A freshly killed chicken has only that bacteria that the live chicken had. The longer between killing and feeding, the more bacteria. Starting out with a healthy chicken is a relatively safe feeding for a reptile as is feeding a freshly thawed chicken. Now I do not know if Salmonella is endemic to all chickens or if a moderate amount of the bacteria present in a carcass is dangerous to a reptile. I can only say that after a couple of years of feeding chickens I have found the results very satisfying in my colony. I've never seen vomiting or diarhea in my snakes from feeding chickens (diarhea did occur at the initial switching time but not after).

>>Royer posted nutritional values of several prey in the original thread. His values are probably correct for farmed animals- but, pasture raising and other more natural means of raising animals for meat have proven that the nutritional values are different than factory farmed animals. One of the reasons that rabbits have such high protein to fat and low cholesterol is that, so far, rabbit growers have not found the means to exploit rabbit farming the way others have for pork, chicken, and beef. Rabbits are still grown in more or less natural ways by small family farms. Pature raised hogs, chicken, and cattle are much healthier and leaner animals to feed a family than their commercially produced counterparts, which are fattened with grains and steroids prior to slaughter. If anyone is interested in the nutritional value of pasture raised livestock, I will locate the links for you as time allows- please e-mail me. Of course the nutrtional values will be for dressed carcasses and not whole animals, again we are dealing with a human market not a reptile market.

>>The clincher for all of this, as far as reptile nutrition is concerned, is that a keeper should begin with a healthy source of prey. Locating a small farm within driving distance to one's home is important if one can't grow the prey- even if it is a considerable driving distance. This is probably something that few people give thought to when purchasing a Burmese python, but it is just as important as safe housing, imo.

>>Given the choice between raising chickens and rabbits- I would choose rabbits. They are far easier to raise in terms of labor though as Brian mentioned they are cheaper to raise in terms of feed and equipment. Chickens are labor intensive to raise properly- they destroy pasture in a short time and the profit margin is narrow because of competition from factory farmed alternatives which are much cheaper and less labor intensive (since they are never cleaned out and crammed in little cages for their entire lives).

>>A few rules to follow if one decides to feed chickens:

>>1) Purchase from a family farm with a free range flock.

>>2) Never refreeze a thawed carcass

>>3) Do not feed supermarket processed chicken.

>>4) Feed in the constrictor's cage as opposed to moving him or her back to the cage after feeding- beaks and claws can rupture the intestinal wall.

>>5) Start with a smaller chicken than a rabbit would have been comparatively - to allow for the digestive upset that comes from switching)

>>I hope this has been helpful. Once the complete study has been published I will post a link to it. I don't think it will show anything different than common sense will tell us....

>>-----

>>Marcia Pimentel

>>Tango River Reptiles

>>GiantFeeders
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It isn't "Ideas" that fail or succeed,... it is the "Sytstems" which are instilled to launch and sustain the idea that either fail or succeed.>[Me.]

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