Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I know some are really picky, but if you are feeding a cbb and persistant scenting should work, it has for the 5 easterns I have.
Nick

Thanks Nick, it's nice to know there is another level headed person on here. I've never seen a healthy hog starve to death in the presence of mice. They can be switched over!

For the others, in the years I've been on this forum, no one has ever found a source of feeder toads that are legal, CLEAN, collected sustainably, or captive bred. IMO, if you have a hog, you almost HAVE to feed it mice.
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Virginia Herping
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VaHS
Virginia Herpetological Society online store
http://www.cafepress.com/vaherpsociety

"The irrational fear of snakes is the only excuse a grown man has... to act like a complete sissy" - Colchicine

I agree also,in the post a little further down,I was asking about toads for someone who doesn't agree.

Well, last year, I had 4 easterns, which had all passed quarintine with flying colors! One I had for 4 years. I too believed in feeding toads. I regularly checked for parasites, so was not worried about that issue. My snakes all died a horrible death one at a time. They slowly starved to death over 6 mths, while keeping their same feeding schedule! Towards the end they were eating every 3 days, and still wasted away!! The consensus by the vets was a viral agent introduced by the toads.... I never want to go through that again! I now feed mice. The trick is to not over feed, and to give your animal enough room to really move around and get some exercise.
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Jenea

2:3:1 Tricolor Hognose (plus babies)
4:2 Eastern Hognose
1:2 Western Hognose
0:2 Southern Hognose
0:0:3 Florida Redbelly Snakes
0:1 Gulf Coast Box Turtle
1:1 Red-eared Slider
1:2 Eastern Fence Lizards
2:0 Cats
1:1 Kids
1:0 Spouse

what's the longest you can claim to have sustained a platyrhinos on a diet of mice?

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"with head raised regally,and gazing at me with lidless eyes,he seemed to question with flicks of his long forked tongue my right to trespass on his territory" Carl Kauffeld

You don't specify why you want to know how long I have maintained in eastern on mice, but I'm going to assume that you are rather apprehensive about my claims.

I have to point out that it should not matter how long I have maintained a hognose on mice. For one, just because I'm knowledgeable about hognoses doesn't mean I have to have a lot of experience with keeping them in captivity (theoretically speaking). You may wonder how a person can be considered knowledgeable without having a large collection to their name, but I would like to point out that Leo Fender, the inventor of Fender guitars, was not a guitarist himself. I doubt anyone could argue he was not an expert.

Secondly and most importantly, what any single person has done with a single animal is practically irrelevant. I could claim that I have had an individual on mice for 20 years. Although that would be a spectacular feat in itself, it is only one person and one animal. Along the same lines, the people on these forums to run around like chicken with their heads cut off saying that they fed their Eastern a mouse and it died a week later are almost as equally irrelevant. Unfortunately a lot of the myths about hognoses are based upon single events and single animals, basically they are all anecdotal observations without any real weight. The claims I am making are based upon interviews with numerous keepers, both hobbyist and zoo keepers.

All of that was to say that my credibility doesn't necessarily rest in my own ability to back up my claims directly. The fact is, if done properly, a hognose can thrive in captivity on exclusively mice. No one has been able to provide me with a single shred of evidence to the contrary.

Alas, I will concede and answer your question directly. I am the former curator of amphibians and reptiles at a museum whose collection topped out at around 220 animals while I was there. The collection concentrated on Virginia's native animals, including Eastern hognoses (VERY popular for the educational programs). There was an eastern hognose that lived about 12 years in captivity at the Museum and was fed absolutely no amphibians. It was fed other food items other than mice occasionally, including bull minnows and Mazuri's amphibian and reptile gel diet. She died about a year ago and was probably close to 15 years old. She had all the signs of old age including cataracts and arthritis, and died of age related heart failure. The collection of Eastern hognoses there have always been maintained on a diet of mice but in contrast to a lot of people I see on this forum, they are given the proper environment and regularly dewormed.

I hope that answers the question for you.

PS- I like the quote in your signature.
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Virginia Herping
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VaHS
Virginia Herpetological Society online store
http://www.cafepress.com/vaherpsociety

"The irrational fear of snakes is the only excuse a grown man has... to act like a complete sissy" - Colchicine

As a current curator at the state natural science museum here in Raleigh, NC I also have first hand experience keeping Easterns on a rodent diet. I found that they have a hankering for fish as well (it was great to see that you had similar finding with your hogs). There are a variety of factors that influence captive longevity, and although diet is a major one you have to look at a multitude of other parameters. Fatty livers have been recorded in this species and a keeper should be vigilant with an Easterns diet but rodents are a sensible, and sustainable, diet choice. I hope some of this made some sense, I have been sleep deprived all weekend (time to fix that!).

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Frank Roberts
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John Rodriguez and Frank Roberts or vise versa

>>what's the longest you can claim to have sustained a platyrhinos on a diet of mice?
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I have a female that is 2 years 3 months old. Since the day she hatched she has been fed strictly mice/rats... and is still growing. 2 1/2 feet now.. maybe longer.. haven't measured her recently. She is not obese.. instead she is nice and sleek. She currently gets 3 pinky rats (or 2 fuzzy rats) every 10-15 days or so. When she was much younger and putting on major growth spurts I had been feeding her 1-2 pinky/fuzzy mice every 3-5 days or so. Once her growth tapered off, I of course adjusted her diet accordingly.

I have 4 additional eastern hatchlings I recently acquired in the last 2 months that will similarily be fed a strict rodent diet... and I expect them to do quite well.

I am of the opinion that most "problems" with easterns and rodent based diets probably lay in either feeding more than the animal needs in a given time frame (based on age & activity levels of the snake being fed a higher nutritional dense rodent compared to amphibians) and/or are attempting to feed fully furred rodents (which may cause blockage in the animals). Easterns are adapted to eating amphibians. Toads/Frogs do not have fur. An occasional rodent meal in the wild would not normally cause a problem. A consistant diet of rodents in captivity could possibly create a problem as the snake might not actually be handle to handle fur load (which doesn't get digested). Sticking to pinkies and fuzzies (or hairless strains of mice) you can eliminate most or all of the fur problem. Adjusting the feeding schedule, allowing for more activity, etc. can help eliminate the obesity problems.

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PHWyvern

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Frank Roberts
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John Rodriguez and Frank Roberts or vise versa

I also have a captive bred eastern female that has never had a toad.I let her get a little overweight a year or so ago but,slowed down feeding her & she looks great now!She is 3 yrs. Thanks!, Jeff

more like SPECTACULAR!!!! GATTA love a pure black eastern, I am envious
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Frank Roberts
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John Rodriguez and Frank Roberts or vise versa

Thanks Frank!!

I have limited experience with easterns, but what about freezing toads long enough to kill the internal parasites? There is still the question as to where to find a reliable source of toads though.

I've got 2 eastern hatchlings that are on their 4th meal and just switched to unscented pinks. (as of today!) I'll continue to feed them rodents, but still have questions about their longetivity on an altered diet.
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1.0 Malagasy Giant Hognose
0.1 Jungle Carpet Python
1.0 Black Milk
1.0 Black Pine
1.0 White Lipped Python
0.1 Guyana Red Tail Boa
1.0 Yellowtail Cribo
1.0 Unicolor Cribo
0.0.1 Blacktail Cribo
0.0.2 Eastern Hognose

If there are viral agents present like in the above post, freezing may not be sufficient. There is also still the fact that the toads are seldom sustainabley harvested. With the majority of the world's amphibian species in dramatic decline, I personally can not justify taking them from the wild to use as feeders.

A lot of the premature deaths I've read about on this forum seem to be tied with obesity. I feed my snakes about once a week, but lately have been scaling back for my non-breeding adults, especially if the snake looks plump. When I took care of the herp collection at college, most of the coubrid snakes were fed biweekly and lived 15-17 years (some of these were already adults when acquired). Less may be more. I also try to feed the largest mouse they can comfortably take. Young mice have a higher fat content and less calcified bones. I've heard some say that easterns seem to have trouble with fur, I don't know whether this is actually true or if hairless mice are commercially available. If hair really is a problem, I'd probably resort to shaving the mice before I'd feed toads I don't think rat pups are a good option since they would have the same increased fat content as baby mice.

-Alice

I have to say that this thread has made me excited about the changes in the hognose community in the last couple of years. When I first started posting about feeding Easterns mice, I got clobbered by some pretty mean people who didn't like me to tell them they were wrong. And now to see several people speak up in a single thread about their experiences really leads me to believe that in the not too near future, we can save a lot of hogs, and a lot of toads, from careless deaths.

Aliceinwl impressed me the most with her post, especially since she is a new face to me (I've been absent mostly for the last six months because I've been moving, my longest break from this forum in probably five years). She has hit it on the head as far as I'm concerned. Amphibian decline is real, and just because a particular species is common doesn't mean it is more resistant to extinction. To say that there is nothing wrong with collecting toads when they see so many is just foolish ignorance. They are merely repeating the same thing that has been uttered prior to the decline or extinction of many other species. I firmly believe that frogs should not be taken from the wild just to feed a pet snake. On top of that she made a very good point about obesity in hognoses. The greatest cause of mortality for captive herps boils down to husbandry. And what is the biggest problem with captive husbandry? Nutrition. What is the biggest problem with captive nutrition? Overfeeding. This phenomenon holds true for practically all of the reptiles and amphibians. Apparently hognoses are just more sensitive to overfeeding.

I want to encourage all of you pro mice people to counter anyone on these forums that claim mice will kill Easterns. Simply ask them where they get their information and that ends the argument. There is absolutely NO credible source of information about mice causing the deaths of eastern hognoses. Jenea had to learn the hard way, so let's make it easy on everyone else.
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Virginia Herping
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VaHS
Virginia Herpetological Society online store
http://www.cafepress.com/vaherpsociety

"The irrational fear of snakes is the only excuse a grown man has... to act like a complete sissy" - Colchicine