Reptile & Amphibian Forums

In the sixties when you could own any snake in Florida, without worrying about being fined or arrested. I was a young teenager,and had indigos ocassionally. I found them to be very cool snakes, but after cleaning up after the eating pooping machines for a couple of months. I would tire of the constant cleaning and release them.
Of course all of my experiences were with WC snakes. Does a mouse/rat diet of captive raised Indigos cut down on the smell and runny consistency of their feces?
Photos are of DOR indigos found on cape canaveral air force base.

Dear Buddygrout, sometimes my preconcieved ideas are not matched by evidence. I have read about Indigos being real messy, "A@s cannons" etc. I have not found that to be the case, they do have a fast metabolism and are somewhat less solid stools than many other snakes, but not nearly as bad as often described. I recently have diversified the diet, and I assumed that feeding them trout would lead to a real mess...it is not bad, in fact, probably less messy than when feeding rodents. A pair of Indigos does not speak for all, but that is my personal experience. Defecations have more liquid and smells distinct from many other snakes, which your family will point out to you.

What say the brethrin'? I use newspaper substrate, because the passing of liquid would contaminate many other substrates. I want it easy to clean and cheap. I think the ofen discussed messy nature of Drys is exagerrated, but they are more work than say a boa or python or kingsnake of equal mass. vic h.

I think they are worth the "trouble". Not as bad as a human baby by any stretch, but I've never fed a human baby F/T rodents. Maybe that would help?

Seriously, they can make a mess, but they don't poop in their water bowl all the time like boas do. I don't have to chisel rock hard urates out of the bowl, so that's a plus.

Maybe it's the diet, maybe captive bred snakes have less toxic gut flora, but I don't find them so bad.

pines and bulls.....i keep both pits and drys....and the pits are the prince of PU

I agree with you 12345% on that assessment. Pines are the champs of smelly poo. My indies are like a breath of fresh air compared to the pits.

daveb
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in the light, you will find the road...

I will admit that a possible reason was I fed them toads as this was a very easy prey iten to get around my house at night. I'm sure that compounded the smell. Buddy.