Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My 7 inch sav gets a pinky every other day.If I give my baby sav live food will it only accept live after that or can I go back and forth? Someone told me there is no nutritional value to pinkies is this true?

it doesn't matter if its alive or dead, but monitors display different behaviors with live food.

About pinkies, I don't know, but maybe several thousand ratsnakes and kingsnakes, plus many other species, babies, will be raised on pinkies this year, and last year, and the year before that, etc. So I guess they are just fine. Do you have a reason to think monitor babies are different then other reptile babies. F

i'd think that pinkies would be high in fat and protien but low in calcium ( because there bones havent developed fully) as far as feeding live or dead, i always feed dead just because monitors are such voracious feeders they don't care either way, so why not do it the right way? , you could also try ground up raw turkey as a dietary suppliment, maybe alternate between that and pinkies? just to keep the fat content down a little bit, hope i've helped out

James

Hi James, Actually you are allow to "think" whatever you like. But I have not had a problem raising many many species of monitors on pinkies. That is out of the egg till they are large enough to feed on mice. They have all grown efficiently and without problem.

The point is James, I do not know if pinkies are high in fat or not, I do know that monitors grow very well on them. For me thats what counts. Thanks Frank

I'm more of a snake person, but there's an arugement that pinkies ARE high in calcium because their little tummies are full of milk. If this is true it would be better to have frozen ones than ones that have been sitting out away from their mother for hours and hours. At any rate, I agree with FR... snakes can't be that different from monitors, and some of those take years to get big enough to eat anything but pinks and small fuzzies.
I also really don't see them being higher in fat than adult mice by any significant amount. Especially if they're only a few days old. I guess it's possible though. I'd say the biggest downside might be the lack of hair. A little hair now and then really cleans out the system .