Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am just curious. With all the talk on the forum about our hogs going for periods of time without eating, I have a question. Has anyone here actually had a hognose die from not eating?
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0.1 Western Hognose
1.0 Ball Python

Don't be too alarmed I've had a hog not eat since Feb and he's doing just fine still. I've taken him to the vet and he says he is perfectly healthy. He's just not eating. I keep offering him food at the smae time I feed my other two hogs but he still won't eat. And yes I've tried everything everybody has posted on feeding tricks and still nothing. I still would take him to the vet to find out if he's sick or just stubborn though.

Good Luck,
Louie

You realized the same thing I try to emphasize on this forum, hognoses won't starve themselves to death. I think that a lot of hogs just don't NEED to eat, they get a lot of calories and on a regular basis which conflicts with their natural history and prey availability. People just need to wait it out. Not eating since Feb is extreme, but others have noted similar periods of anorexia before on this forum.
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"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."
Governor George W. Bush, Jr.

"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)

H.platyrhinos are overly reliant on toads and frogs. Toads and frogs aren't exactly the most nutritious morsels in the world. That may explain platyrhinos high metabolic rate! H.nasicus (maybe simus as well)are a different matter.
My recommendation, to maintain a healthy Eastern hognose, is to feed them toads and frogs (and often). If you don't like that reality, then you shouldn't consider platyrhinos as a "pet." If you like platyrhinos, and don't want to feed them amphibs, you shouldn't have one in a cage. A steady rodent diet is similar to feeding a person only bacon. It's simply a slow death (=cruelty).
If you don't mind feeding them amphibs (what they eat in the real world), they are among the easiest captives. There is a reason that they don't readily accept mice. In my opinion, the reason is because they didn't evolve along that path.
Shane

>H.platyrhinos are overly reliant on toads and frogs.
That is an oversimplification, they also eat many invertebrates, not to mention turtle eggs and rodents as big as chipmunks.

> Toads and frogs aren't exactly the most nutritious morsels in the world.
What exactly do you base this upon?

>That may explain platyrhinos high metabolic rate!
What exactly do you base this upon? I'm assuming you are relating a qualitative personal observation. I am unaware of any metabolic studies of hognoses (done by measuring consumption of oxygen and the release of carbon dioxide).

>My recommendation, to maintain a healthy Eastern hognose, is to feed them toads and frogs (and often).
What exactly do you base this upon?

>If you don't like that reality, then you shouldn't consider platyrhinos as a "pet." If you like platyrhinos, and don't want to feed them amphibs, you shouldn't have one in a cage.
I can't agree more! Because of the conflicting information on the captive diet of Eastern hognoses, I consider these animals to be off-limits to the vast majority of pet owners. Although I have not found a single stitch of credible information supporting the claims of most people (Easterns MUST be fed amphibians), I will continue to recommend Western hognoses on till this issue is resolved.

>A steady rodent diet is similar to feeding a person only bacon.
What exactly do you base this upon? This is an excruciatingly poor analogy. I will not harp on it because I'm sure you did not intend for it to be the defining example in your argument. Simply, rodents are a complete diet, of which 99 percent of the hognose's colubrid relatives are able to subsist upon in captivity.

>It's simply a slow death (=cruelty).
I was very surprised by this statement. Apparently your definition of cruelty only extends to animals that you are personally concerned with. Am I not the only one who considers feeding a live toad to a hognose, where it will literally be digested to death, cruel? I happened to have an equal concern for amphibians as I do for hognoses, and extend my definition of ecological justice equally to both.

>If you don't mind feeding them amphibs (what they eat in the real world),
Amongst many other things...

Shane,
We have been at it before on this forum, there still has not been any new information presented here on the captive husbandry of hognoses that supports your claim. Since the last time you and I talked, I have done an extensive literature search, and now have three 3-ring binders slammed full of literature. I have recently signed onto an exotic veterinary listserv that I hope will be promising.. I am hoping to dig up any and all necropsy reports I can find on hognoses. Quite simply, no one has been able to provide me with any professionally derived evidence that a captive diet of exclusively rodents has been detrimental to the health of an Eastern hognose. I am tied up with school right now, but intend on going full blast in December. I am making an honest effort to collect as much information as possible. But without a doubt, and unequivocally, I have not been able to find any information on rodents being detrimental to hognoses as of yet. If you are able to provide any credible information, I would love to see it one way or the other. Until then it does no good to rewind and play the same old hearsay and information with no factual basis.

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"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."
Governor George W. Bush, Jr.

"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)

Emotion is never a good answer. How about you quoting several gut content analyses of wild platyrhinos populations (I can easily find a few in my own library). I'm sure you'll find that especially toads, and frogs to a somewhat lesser degree, will comprise the overwhelming bulk. I can understand that you want to save the toads, but don't grossly distort the facts on your journey. Herpetoculture and reality are often in conflict. You make it worse (at the expense of Eastern hognoses in captivity). Explain to me how a platyrhinos (or the other two species for that matter) can actually kill a rodent the size of an adult mouse (and a chipmunk while you're at it). After you explain that to me, please offer your expertise in regard to the unique rostral that Heterodon share.
Once your'e done with those opinions, explain to me why you somehow discourage other people from keeping platyrhinos. Were you born with a green-thumb when it comes to platyrhinos herpetoculture?
Shane

>I can understand that you want to save the toads, but don't grossly distort the facts on your journey.
-Please point out which facts I have distorted, as I would like to have them corrected.

>Herpetoculture and reality are often in conflict. You make it worse (at the expense of Eastern hognoses in captivity).
- Once again you have not provided any proof as to why an all rodent diet is detrimental to an Eastern hognose. I would like to point out for the sake of the other forum visitors, that nobody really has any proof, and that anything that you hear on these forums usually comes from anecdotal observations and nothing more.
If I am truly making life worse for the hognoses I am in charge of, at least I am not doing it at the expense of potentially thousands of WILD animals. Even if it could be proven that an Eastern's lifespan is shortened by a rodent diet, it certainly isn't by much, since myself and many others have maintained Eastern's on in all rodent diet for 10 years or more.

>>Once your'e done with those opinions, explain to me why you somehow discourage other people from keeping platyrhinos. Were you born with a green-thumb when it comes to platyrhinos herpetoculture?
- Huh? In my last post I agreed with you completely on the reasons for not keeping Eastern hognoses in captivity. If you are not comfortable with pulling wild animals out of their habitats and feeding him to a pet snake, then you shouldn't have that pet snake. And in another sense, if people are not prepared to feed their Eastern's a food source that is not in danger of declining, then they should not have an Eastern.

>How about you quoting several gut content analyses of wild platyrhinos populations (I can easily find a few in my own library). I'm sure you'll find that especially toads, and frogs to a somewhat lesser degree, will comprise the overwhelming bulk.

- You and I have actually been through this before, where I provided several studies on the diet analysis of Eastern hognoses. Unlike what most people know about hognoses, I am not reporting rumors or what I've learned on these forums and nowhere else.

I would like to point out that in the below references, I am not refuting that amphibians comprise a significant proportion of an Eastern hognoses diet. The information below, however illustrates nicely the diversity of an Eastern's diet, and is certainly not restricted to frogs.

Uhler, F.M, C. Cottam, T.E. Clarke. 1939. Food of snakes of the George Washington National Forest, Virginia. Trans. North Am. Wildl. Conf. 4:605-622.

Paraphrasing... Frogs are a favorite food, although contrary to most published accounts, warm-blooded vertebrates are at times taken. One had made its entire meal on a chipmunk, and another 87 percent of its meal on a mouse.
- In fairness, the author also reported that 70 percent of the hognoses he surveyed had eaten frogs.

As you can see I am directly citing literature, I do not need to provide you with my speculations on how a hognoses subdues a chipmunk, especially when they are known for their scavenging habits.

Platt, D.R. 1969. Natural history of the hognose snakes Heterodon platyrhinos and Heterodon nasicus. University of Kansas Publications Museum of Natural History. 18 (4):253-420.

-Platt reported that the Eastern hognoses diet from various parts of the species range included 58 percent amphibians, 35 percent insects, 5 percent reptiles, 2 percent birds, and 3 percent mammals.
- Platt also stated that Uhler did not include the analysis of stomachs of five hognoses that contained only insect fragments, thereby skewing his percentages.
- An analysis of scat from 69 hognoses revealed that 52 percent of them contained insect fragments, while only 17 percent contained amphibians.

The Food of Some Colubrid Snakes from Fort Benning, Georgia
W. J. Hamilton, Jr.; Joseph A. Pollack
Ecology, Vol. 37, No. 3. (Jul., 1956), pp. 519-526.

-"Most writers credit this species as a key predator of toads and frogs, although its food is scarcely limited to these amphibians"
- Insects comprised nearly 50 percent of the diet of Eastern hognoses in this study, while amphibians were only 21 percent, apparently hognoses in this area did not eat any birds or mammals.

Mills, Mark S. and S. Rebecca Yeomans. 1993. Heterodon platirhinos (Eastern hognose snake) diet. Herpetological Review. 24 62.

- These authors reported an Eastern regurgitating a millipede and a beetle, and cited several other sources that have reported insects and millipede's in the diet of hognoses.

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"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."
Governor George W. Bush, Jr.

"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)

You lost me on most of that thread. The stats you offered on warm blooded prey, and those of amphib prey didn't exactly add up to 100%. Somewhere along the line you forgot to mention something. I don't have a problem with people keeping Eastern hognose. My problem is with people who feed them (or try) a diet of rodents. I encourage people to feed them amphibs (reality suggests that those amphibs are from the wild), and I don't have a problem with feeding them wild toads and frogs.
I'll get back to you on the issue of health concerns re: rodent diet (it will involve someone else to make a post on this forum). For now I will leave you and everyone else who has bothered to read this:
Why in the world do wild platyrhinos eat mainly amphibian prey in the wild?
Shane

I'm keeping 1.1 H.nasicus for 1 month.
For this time: Boy ate 4 pinky mices without any problems (one per week). Girl don't eat at all - not only scented by frog, but I offered her frogs and TOADS themselves and no result.
I'm not a big specialist in hogs, but I think that they doesn't eat not because they USE to eat toads and DON'T USE to eat mices (because my girl doesn't eat both).
P.S.: During this time boy growed up significally (comparing with girl).