Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello all,

My growing Blackthroat is now eating eight mice twice per day. I'm extremely grateful for his hardiness, compared to the iguanids.

I'm wondering if I can start feeding two rats of the same total mass as eight mice, twice per day. He pops those mice down like I toss M&M's into my mouth. What do you think? Is this a good time to switch to appropriate-size rats? I do all frozen-thawed with the prey.

Roger

Are you the Pince of Qhatar or something? If I fed that many mice to Monitors I would run out of mice and go broke...and I breed mice!!! You can absolutely substitute larger rats for that many mice. I don't even use mice for my larger monitors unless I get overrun with them and that is only a problem in the winter. If you breed your own rodents, I find rats are more productive than mice and all around a much better rodent. African soft-furred rats are really good also and produce really well once they get going.

Instead of going straight to big ass rats; try slowly going from small mice to medium rats- something like 8 mice to 4 rats; then increase the size, 3 bigger rats, then 2.

Will get your animal used to larger food items slowly.

Also, as the fella above said, you can prolly slow the feeding slightly- the equivalent of 8 mice, 2 times per day is ALOT; depending on the size of the monitor- im guessing this is a big fella though, so maybe not.

Keep in mind many small meals = easier to digest. My female albig at 5 foot. Stil rarely eat's rats, if she gets Rats they are small, and med at the largest. She get's mostly Chicks, Mice, Seafood items, and now Snails. The laragest items she get's is fish, but they digest easy and fast.

I'd still stick with Mice, sure it's a lot of Mice, but looking at the nutritional content value of Mice, and Rats, Mice have a edge on Rats. At least for me, I find Mice are cheaper as well.

Cheers,
Chad

That's true, but come on... 8 mice 2 times a day?!?! That's FREAKIN 112 mice a week!!! That's like 500 mice in a month! TONS OF $$$. I would feel like he's definately ready for rats.

Se7en,

Yes it's a lot. I think if he were wild in his habitat, he'd have to do a lot of hunting to grow up.

Roger

Gram per gram, rat is slightly cheaper than mouse at RodentPro. I understand that due to surface area math, rats would give a lot less skin and hair. I don't know if that's good or bad.

Do you feed garden snails? I'd be concerned about parasites. I'd like to know your technique. The big English pest garden snail is easy to raise in five gallon buckets with alfalfa for food. I live where they happen to be plentiful, though they brummate through the hottest summer months.

Roger

I had to come to terms with the best way to feed my BT year before I got him, so in my mind my concession for having one was the cost of feeding whole prey. I quit smoking, pizzas, and McDonald's to afford the frozen prey. His food heat cost less than keeping an iguana and it's vet visits. He's grouchier but a lot more interesting., with surprise coloration.

Thanks for the answer.

Roger

Got a picture of your blackthroat?

It seems to work great to feed large amounts and to get them to grow fast.
Heres why, they can digest many small items faster with less effort and less energy used than with a single large item, ergo, they get more benefit from each meal.
Keep in mind they can grow fast on larger items, but this requires more heat, more temperature range, and more humidity range. This tells you that if you dont have so good of options in your cages, go with many small items.
I fed 6-9 large mice a day to my albigs from 3ft to about 5ft in length with a few rare large meals. Its not hard to keep hundreds of frozen mice around and to get them cheap if you look around.
Also I keep hundreds of chicken peeps, albigs seem to be drawn to birds a bit more than mice, and they require a bit less in numbers, say 6 instead of 9.
My adult flavi-argus eats many peeps, and in between big meals such as guinea pigs, Sobek eats the same, but sometimes more guinea pigs. Keep in mind the size difference between the 2 examples I used, one is 6.5ft (33 lbs)and one is 4ft (about 6-9 lbs).

Be aware of where you get your frozen rodents. Cheap is not always good. I used to get frozen rats and mice from an unamed herp organization when I lived in N.Y. One time while thawing some out a rats skin came apart and we noticed the rat had a stomach staple. We (me & my wife) asked ourselves the obvious question of "why does this rat have a stomach staple?". Of course we concluded that since this unamed organizatio was based near an un-named university we a medical school, these must have been lab-surplus rodents. As if stomach staples aren't bad enough we wondered what other experiments they may have been subjected to. The un-named organisation represented these rodents as being raised by resdents of a home for men with severe brain injuries as a method of rehabilitation. I have raised my own rodents because of this and for other various reasons ever since. I am not saying obviously that all frozen rodents are bad as there are many reputable breeders out there. I am just saying to beware of the lowest common denominator. If I had not seen this for myself I would have never thought of such a thing btw.

Look into them or ask other customers about them.
Ive never had a problem in over 15 years with monitors and over 20 years with any reptiles.
In fact the cheapest mice I ever got came from a supplier that sold me bags of various size and color adult mice ranging from almost fuzzy sized (dwarf mice) to jumbo sized mice, all very healthy, none fat, nothing funny about them. I bought lots of them at 100-200 per bag (big bags), but the actual counts always came out to 239-579 each, never less. I paid anywhere from $20-$40 for these bags, thats 7-8 cents each per mouse. They werent the freshest mice compared to rodentpro, but they were always used up and lasted a long time.
Ive gotten rodentpro rats, quail, guinea pigs, peeps, mice on sales, and have gotten rats from a local supplier that sold them at rodentpro sales prices.
Ive gotten them from many sources over the years, and bred my own rats at one time.
The costs involved with breeding your own mice are not worth it compared to average frozen rodent prices. This was a topic of discussion on here many times. If you are breeding thousands and selling most of them it becomes worth the money to breed your own. Until then you are caught in food, caging, efoort etc to breed and care for them. Rats are simple to breed compared to mice, and can turn a high amount of feeders, but are expensive in comparison to frozen feeders.
Ive considered asking what the nearest zoo pays for 50 lb bags of frozen rodents, and buying from them sometimes. I already get some of my canines evening diet from them very cheaply.

Figure out what 9 mice a day cost you to feed to one monitor (thats caging, food, water, electricity, heating, cooling, your time, etc). Ill bet its alot higher than you think.