Reptile & Amphibian Forums

All,
While I am at it, might as well ask for some thoughts on live food, too.
I tend to feed a few of my pines live feeders, which I have recently started to "gut load" with various greens (i.e., alfalfa/Timothy hay/etc..) before offering them to the snakes. Has anyone here done this? If so, did you notice any real differences in appearance/vigor/color/overall appearance??
My initial reasoning for doing this was to find a good way of introducing plant matter, albeit a small amount of plant matter, to the diet of my pines. I feel there is/will be some benefit, but quantitatively speaking just how much is what I would like to ask for some thoughts on.
Thanks in advance for your time and input.
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Brian
pinesnakepiney@gmail.com

I'll try here too. I love the thought of feeding feeder animals higher quality foods and a good variety. With that said I don't like feeding live prey to a snake. Years ago in 93 I imported a pair of blood pythons. These were evil animals that didn't want to look at anything but live prey. I felt I was lucky and just happy to have a wild caught pair eating live rats right away. So I left it at that. The male was around 4 feet long. One night in feeding, he came flying out of his water tub and grabbed the rat no differently than he had 4 or 5 times before. The only difference this time is that while he was constricting the rat (unfortunately I didn't watch the process), the rat chewed a nickel sized hole in the snakes neck, thru the muscle and into vertebrae. The snake continued to constrict and then swallowed the rat but sustained some major damage. From that day on I do not feed live animals unless absolutely necessary and if I do have to feed live I don't leave the snake unattended. Hope that helps. All it takes is one time and you may not have a live snake to come back to.

Jeremy
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Jeremy Pierce
Shade Tree Exotics
shade-tree-exotics@att.net

Hi Jeremy,
Thanks for your response. I appreciate any and all information that you guys can provide.
I am sorry to hear about your blood python's unfortunate experience. Please tell me this: would it be a better idea then to gut load then pre-kill the rodents? I suppose so, and that way I would still pass along the plant matter. On another note, would you consider "stunning" the prey rather than outright killing??
Thanks agin for your input!
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Brian
pinesnakepiney@gmail.com