Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm sure most of you feed your captives dead rodents, but what are your experiences with feeding live rodents? I'm especially interested in the smaller snakes and how they deal with potentially dangerous prey (e.g. a 2-3' Dry and a newly weaned house mouse). How do they kill the mouse (or do they swallow it alive)? Is it a chewing competition, or do the snakes normally use other tactics to make the kill? Shane

I fed one of them a live mouse and the snake was (probably) 1.5 years old.

The snake snagged the mouse and began to bash the thing back and forth and then went into Gator-rolling twists. He thrashed the mouse so hard I thought he'd break the glass doors of the cage. It was actually rather terrifying for me to watch and probably unpleasant for the snake... definitely so for mouse.

I suppose if it had been a smaller mouse it would have just swallowed it without all the fuss.

I'll never feed live to anything but hatchlings.

Doug T

>>I'm sure most of you feed your captives dead rodents, but what are your experiences with feeding live rodents? I'm especially interested in the smaller snakes and how they deal with potentially dangerous prey (e.g. a 2-3' Dry and a newly weaned house mouse). How do they kill the mouse (or do they swallow it alive)? Is it a chewing competition, or do the snakes normally use other tactics to make the kill? Shane

I agree with Doug. I get babies off live pinkies as soon as I can and feed nothing but frozen-thawed. I have fed Drys live rodents before....it's pretty spectacular. They tend to beat it to death on the side of the cage if it's too big to just swallow alive. If it's small enough, they just start swallowing it alive. That has to really suck for the rat.

One thing I've noticed about Drys as opposed to other colubrid species. They seem to know if the food is alive or dead. If it's frozen/thawed, there's none of the drama. If it's alive, the show's on. My kingsnakes and pine snakes don't always seem to realize the prey is dead and will often constrict it anyway, especially the pine snakes.

I posed the question here for confirmation of what I've read. The reason behind the post has to deal with our native non-constricting colubrids (especially hognose) and how they kill potentially dangerous rodents in the wild. Check out my post on the hognose forum if you like. Shane

Dear Texas Herper,

Eastern Indigos tend to use their bodies to pin or hold the live mice or rats are fed to them. Sometimes this works well, other times it is a disaster, with the mouse or rat chewing into the snakes scales. To be honest with you, even though Indigos are considered premier sight/smeell hunters in the wild, the ones I have seen in captivity have a hard time discerning between their rectum oa a mouse. They bite the side of the cage, the newspaper, the waterbowl..makes you wonder how they get along in the wild. With that scenario, with a live mouse or rat in the cage, you risk the snake being biten or even worse..knawed on while that rodent is in their. I HAVE wayched them kill mice...and snakes...and rattlesnakes...but after a period of time it loses any luster that it originally had. Again, they seem so BAD at catching their prey, it is frustrateing even watching them. So,...take Dougs etc advice...DONT FEED LIVE, except as neonates. Its just not worth it, not fair to the mice, and makes the snake a potential candidate for the vet-------->Read: Vet Bills)

Cheers

Fred Albury

Fred,

You're the first person I've ever seen refer to indigos as poor hunters. I thought it was just mine!!! It I hold a thawed rodent on forceps, the slight swinging of the rodent never fails to catch the snake's attention, but if the swinging is more than an inch or so either way, my adults will miss with their grab every time, then go about searching the entire cage for the rat they smell, only to start over again when they notice the rodent swinging in the air. I have to hold the rat in a corner of the cage so it doesn't swing wildly, or place it on the cage bottom, directly beneath the snake's nose.
How DO they do it in the wild??

VinnyButch

This is interesting. What I find is that the babies and subadults are pretty accurate with finding their food and hitting it first strike. The adults act like they are stone blind. As Fred said, they bite everything in the cage, including themselves sometimes before they actually find the rat.

Vinny,

As I stated earlier, I cantfor the life of me figure out how these things survive in the wild based on captive behaviours and feeding responses. I noticed the same thing with Hogniose snakes. They BLINDLY swing around the cage with their mouths wide open. And since we know that eastern hognose eat primarily toads and not the mice we TRY and feed them, then they wouldnt be invadeing mice nests and gobbling up the offspring. So where does this abehrrant? feeding behaviour come from. I honestly dont know, though I seriously wonder if the mortality rate of captive bred Eastern wouldnt be sky high due in part to this bizarre and unproductive feeding response.

Then again, it could be the cologne I use drives them insane.
To bad it didnt do that for the ladies.... lol

*Cheers**

Fred Albury

Fred, sorry I didn't comment sooner. Did you read the question I posed on the hognose forum?
I don't keep Drymarchon nor do I ever intend to. If I did I would certainly feed them F/T rodents for the snakes safety. Regardless, they do eat rodents in the wild. Like the old guy said, once they're in captivity it's a different ballgame. I'm sure we can all agree that Indigos are much better at killing rodent prey than any hognose. However, every now and then a platyrhinos will consume a sizeable rodent in the wild. In my opinion that's because a dangerous rodent is already dead or too weak to fight, or perhaps in some cases they're preying on rat or rabbit young, which are sizeable, but not dangerous.
Indigos are the king of prey generalists. They eat anything they possibly can (including carrion). Hognoses aren't; and especially platyrhinos. I'm amazed by the "feed your platyrhinos mice" popularity on the hognose forum. No wonder they consider platyrhinos to be difficult captives. Shane

I've found that I can give them the same stimulation by feeding them F/T using long forceps and then give them a little "tug-o-war" when they grab the rat. No need to feed live.

Nobody said that they need your help. What was said was that it is safer to feed F/T than it is to feed live and this is absolutely true. We have no control over what happens to snakes feeding in the wild and that's not our concern. What is our concern is the fact that we are keeping these animals in captivity and it is our responsibility to do everything in our power to keep them disease free and uninjured.

I've heard the arguments that they should be fed exactly what they eat in the wild, and IMHO it's hogwash. In the first place, they would not be eating domestic rats in the wild. I don't know anyone that is going to go out and catch wild rats and mice to feed their snakes. That would be foolish anyway, because of the danger of wild prey items transmitting parasites to our captive animals (which live domestic rodents can also do). Wild animals, including snakes, normally carry some parasite load. In captivity, because of the confined area they live in, parasite loads can quickly bloom to overwhelming levels (depending on parasite species). Another flaw with that argument...if it applies to snakes, why would it not apply to cats and dogs too? Should they also be fed what they would eat in the wild? Should we be tossing live rabbits into the back yard for our dogs to eat? Captive born and bred snakes are domesticated animals.