Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My corn will eat little pieces of raw beef from my hand. Besides calcium deficiency, is there any reason I should NEVER do this? (I have no intention of feeding him this more than once in a while of course). Please no opinions or flames of outrage, just facts wanted from someone with real knowledge in these matters.
Thank you!

Anyway as long as that isnt the only food source I dont know how it could hurt.I occasionally feed chicken legs to my boas ,but just as a treat.

Humans and many other mammals are omnivorous. With supplementation, we can live on either plant OR animal, but without supplemental vitamins and minerals, one or the other is not enough to remain healthy. I'm not a doctor, but have spoken to enough doctors out there to believe that is accurate. I suspect serpents don't have the intelligence to get tired of one thing only, but I've tried Adkin's low carbohydrate diet and don't think I could do that religiously for the rest of my life.

Snakes were never meant to live on meat alone. Meat being the muscles of other animals. They require roughage, vitamins and minerals found in the viscera, skeletons, and even fur of their natural prey. Just the muscles of mammals is not enough. Even the stomach contents of their prey contribute to a snake's nutrition. It's OK to occasionally feed them just meat, but that should never be their staple diet and if you feed them too much, there'll likely be no warnings of impending malnourishment. They'll just die. No do-overs then. Remember also that you're giving them too much bacteria and too many parasites in raw meat. I lost five pounds the first month of taking parasitology in college after finding out what I've been eating all these years.

It's always best to follow Mother Nature's lead and feed them what they get in the wild. There are no successful substitutes on that level that I'm aware of. However, if you ever develop a line of vegetarian snakes, you'll get the attention (and $$) of thousands of snake keepers.

Good luck,

Don Soderberg
South Mountain Reptiles
www.cornsnake.NET
South Mountain Reptiles

Hmm snakes that only live on plant matter you say?... what happens when you cross a snake and a rabbit?... the snake doesnt have to eat for another month.

Have you seen those snake "sausages" they sell? I'm not sure what the ingredients are...but it would interesting to grind up whole chickens and whole rabbits (and/or adult rats) together and form them into mice size portions to feed snakes maybe half the time. That would be a huge money saver if you think about how much a little 5 gram pinkie sells for and how much equivalent food you could get out of just one chicken and one rabbit!

Most of the snakes I tried to feed those sausages turned their rostrums up to it. I think my efficacy was about 10% on those.

Yes, those are probably whole prey items ground up. Fur, bones, viscera and all. Those would be complete diets if you can get them to eat them.

Don
www.cornsnake.NET
South Mountain Reptiles