Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was just wondering if you can feed rats to western hognoses my female eats 3 mice a week and they hardly put a lump in her I was thinking rats are bigger and might be better or should i feed her more mice, what do you all feed the bigger hogs? thanks Wayne

I personally think that hognoses don't have the gape abilities typical of other snakes. Perhaps they don't need the expanding capabilities if they are just eating frogs and lizards. I would also say it is certainly more natural for snakes to eat one large meal rather several small meals. Try a small rat, you don't have anything to lose.
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...the oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it."
Aldo Leopold (1938)

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
Calvin and Hobbes (Scientific Progress Goes 'Boink', 1991)

Yep , rats are an excellent source of extra fat which is very helpful in post egg laying as well as pre egg . Mice do not carry the extra fat as rats . I recently offered 2 f/t pups to a 1.1 2000 that have ate mice their entire life and the hogs took them right off .

Wayne,
My big girls will take hopper rats or adult mice. I have a few tearlings that only eat pink rats. So try something that you think she could swallow easyily. Ron
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The Crawl Space

I have fed pinkie rats to my westerns for years with no problems. My one concern (and it may be bogus) is that with adult mice, it seems they may get more needed calcium from the fully ossified bones than with Pinkie rats. Anybody have any notions on that? I feed adult mice occasionally just in case.