I have been reading through the posts on here and did a little research in the forums and I have to say that I have found very little pertinent information about the importance of certain vitamins that help your animals reproductive efforts and your husbandry efforts. This post is an attempt to educate some of the newer people in the hobby and to help out others that may have never learned this information.
Several years ago I met a reptile breeder who injected liquid vitamins into his frozen thawed rats before feeding them to his snakes. I became very interested in this idea and decided to look into how effective this practice was. Over the years I have heard and read contradictory reports on this practice. Some say it is unnecessary because all of the vitamins are already in the rat and adding more is senseless because the extra vitamins will just pass through your reptiles system and be discard as waste. Others claimed that it makes a significant difference in the health of the mother snakes, eggs and offspring. I use to use this practice when I bred chameleons and I knew from that experience that additional supplementation was very important to the health of my females. I carried this experience over into my snake husbandry for female retics, burms, balls and boas. I do not Vitaminize their food the whole year however the last two months before cooling I dose the Pre-killed and frozen thawed rats up with Vitamin B12 and liquid calcium. I then does the rats after egg deposition to help the females recover better. I have noticed that the eggs produced are more robust and hardier in the long run, as an added bonus some of the offspring are born slightly heavier then their counter parts from the females I did not Vitaminize. The difference was not astronomical however with ball pythons there is an average from (8) clutches of Vitamized females of about 10-15 grams of extra weight on the neonates. The average female was 2500 grams and produced between 7-9 eggs each this past season. Prior seasons are based on reticulated python production; out of 10 female retics four were not Vitaminized and three bred to produce clutches of 36, 47 & 54 eggs. The Vitaminized females produced 4 clutches of eggs numbering 44, 46, 53, 33 eggs per clutch. The Vitaminized neonates were on average born again 15-20 grams heavier than their counterparts. This extra weight at birth gives Vitaminized neonates a kick start over their counterparts and increases their hardiness. The extra calcium may also increase their bone density which helps their skeletal biology along quite well.
B-12 information:
Vitamin B12 is a member of the vitamin B complex. It contains cobalt, and so is also known as cobalamin. It is exclusively synthesised by bacteria and is found primarily in meat, eggs and dairy products. There has been considerable research into proposed plant sources of vitamin B12. Fermented soya products, seaweeds, and algae such as spirulina have all been suggested as containing significant B12. However, the present consensus is that any B12 present in plant foods is likely to be unavailable to humans and so these foods should not be relied upon as safe sources. Many vegan foods are supplemented with B12. Vitamin B12 is necessary for the synthesis of red blood cells, the maintenance of the nervous system, and growth and development in children. Deficiency can cause anaemia. Vitamin B12 neuropathy, involving the degeneration of nerve fibres and irreversible neurological damage, can also occur.
More information at the link below: It's about humans but you can see the importance of this valuable vitamin for your reptiles also.
