Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i was told by the pet store that if i crunch up a small piece of centrum vitamin pill, mix it with some water, and inject in in a mouse, and then feed the mouse to the snake, i'd see great improvement in his skin ?

another question about skin condition. my bp has some "golden" parts on his skin which are lighter than others (not from the bottom, but from the top), should their skin be gradual in colors ? (meaning lightest from the bottom to darkest at the top)

thanks

Snake skins is fine by itself. I wouldn't do it, beause snakes alreayd get all the vitamins they need from rodents, and if they get too much calcium, it can cause damage. Plus . . . I don't know how good an entire human vitamin would be for a snake.

But I'm sure someone with more experience will come by and elaborate on it.

Personally, I think the best thing for a snake's skin would be keeping the humidity correct and watching their sheds to make sure they're complete.

Reptile skin is so varied, that it's hard to say if color "should" go lighter-darker. I have a snake with a lot of blushing along its back (blushing being lighter color on the dark/background color that doesn't really count as pattern, per se).

I think you can see some blushing on this pic (along the spine), but I'm not positive. Is that what you're talking about?

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-Irish
My Snakes

I would recommend against doing this. You should attempt to fix the problem on the surface before messing with your snakes body chemistry...especially since most of the vitamins and minerals found in my One-a-Day's are not something your typical bp would come across in the wild. The water-soluble vitamins and minerals ingested would just be washed out, but the fat-soluble ones could play havoc with his system.

...it's not going to hurt if you don't overdo it but if your snake is already healthy you can't improve on 100% healthy. What happens is that you can get into a hypervitaminosis situation where things go to hell, and the skin is often the first place you'll see problems. If you feed quality rodents you do NOT need to monkey around with additives. Scott J. Michaels DVM