Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is long and winding but I hope useful: First, I apologize for the delay in this post. I replied to the original thread Friday morning, but after spending close to three hours looking for the links to back up my message- it did not post That was probably my fault- at the time I was working on little sleep.
The recent study I spoke about has not been published. I cannot provide a link. It was discussed with me in a personal conversation with a poultry nutritionist in Iowa. The link that I can provide (one of several but I don't have the time to search for all of them again right now) is the study that brought me to ask the questions about salmonella at the farm level. It is a surprising study with some insight for this subject though it was conducted on hogs by the University of Illinois. Most salmonella studies begin at the processing plant. Very few begin at the farm- only a couple to my knowledge, but this isn't my field. That said, I have only a lay persons understanding of disease and risk factors- my knowledge has been acquired through personal readings and personal interviews.
http://nationalhogfarmer.com/ar/farming_antibiotic_resistance_theories/index.htm

The reason most studies begin at the processing plant (the landmark WHO study, for instance) is that salmonella is endemic to factory farm operations and these studies are conducted for human disease risk, so the processing plant is the logical starting point. Chickens, like reptiles, can manage well with salmonella and other supposedly harmful bacteria in their systems. It is only when the butchering process begins that the bacteria explodes in growth. Once dead, the carcass is exposed to many conditions at the processing plant that spread salmonella from carcass to carcass and even from infected workers to clean carcasses. Salmonella is handled within the human consumption market by cooking (as someone mentioned- people in parts of the U.S. eat all sorts of wild prey but humans cook it first). Freezing doesn't kill salmonella. Never refreeze a chicken if a reptile refuses it. Salmonella goes dormant in a frozen state but it returns to life and multiplies when thawed. Each time you thaw, you essentially have a carcass with more bacteria. A chicken, thawed for the first time, has a moderate amount of salmonella. A freshly killed chicken has only that bacteria that the live chicken had. The longer between killing and feeding, the more bacteria. Starting out with a healthy chicken is a relatively safe feeding for a reptile as is feeding a freshly thawed chicken. Now I do not know if Salmonella is endemic to all chickens or if a moderate amount of the bacteria present in a carcass is dangerous to a reptile. I can only say that after a couple of years of feeding chickens I have found the results very satisfying in my colony. I've never seen vomiting or diarhea in my snakes from feeding chickens (diarhea did occur at the initial switching time but not after).
Royer posted nutritional values of several prey in the original thread. His values are probably correct for farmed animals- but, pasture raising and other more natural means of raising animals for meat have proven that the nutritional values are different than factory farmed animals. One of the reasons that rabbits have such high protein to fat and low cholesterol is that, so far, rabbit growers have not found the means to exploit rabbit farming the way others have for pork, chicken, and beef. Rabbits are still grown in more or less natural ways by small family farms. Pature raised hogs, chicken, and cattle are much healthier and leaner animals to feed a family than their commercially produced counterparts, which are fattened with grains and steroids prior to slaughter. If anyone is interested in the nutritional value of pasture raised livestock, I will locate the links for you as time allows- please e-mail me. Of course the nutrtional values will be for dressed carcasses and not whole animals, again we are dealing with a human market not a reptile market.
The clincher for all of this, as far as reptile nutrition is concerned, is that a keeper should begin with a healthy source of prey. Locating a small farm within driving distance to one's home is important if one can't grow the prey- even if it is a considerable driving distance. This is probably something that few people give thought to when purchasing a Burmese python, but it is just as important as safe housing, imo.
Given the choice between raising chickens and rabbits- I would choose rabbits. They are far easier to raise in terms of labor though as Brian mentioned they are cheaper to raise in terms of feed and equipment. Chickens are labor intensive to raise properly- they destroy pasture in a short time and the profit margin is narrow because of competition from factory farmed alternatives which are much cheaper and less labor intensive (since they are never cleaned out and crammed in little cages for their entire lives).
A few rules to follow if one decides to feed chickens:
1) Purchase from a family farm with a free range flock.
2) Never refreeze a thawed carcass
3) Do not feed supermarket processed chicken.
4) Feed in the constrictor's cage as opposed to moving him or her back to the cage after feeding- beaks and claws can rupture the intestinal wall.
5) Start with a smaller chicken than a rabbit would have been comparatively - to allow for the digestive upset that comes from switching)
I hope this has been helpful. Once the complete study has been published I will post a link to it. I don't think it will show anything different than common sense will tell us....
-----
Marcia Pimentel
Tango River Reptiles
GiantFeeders

I am always interested in more data, so please post the links. Free ranging prey most certainly are healthier...anyone who has seen the carcass of a feedlot steer vs. a pasture steer can tell you that, but I still like to have data.

Unless you are feeding leaner, laying types, the genetics of the commercially bred fryer or broiler chicken are going to make it fatter, regardless. Besides, these heavy varieties can't even support their own weight correctly (having been "designed" to grow from hatch to 8 lbs in 8 weeks), and I don't think they can "free range" effectively. There is also the issue of micronutrients, which are very important in large, fast growing snakes. One good choice might be bronze turkeys, we used to raise them along with the standard white variety and the bronze were always much leaner at slaughter time.

I'm not sure how you would go about free range raising rabbits, though! LOL

That said, wild varieties of our common prey species are almost always healthier than our domestic breeds. Take the Black tailed jackrabbit, for example...a bit more protein than a domestic (which has been bred for muscle mass, mind you) and 1/3 the fat! Too bad we can't crossbreed them with our domestic strains!

One link I have readily available mostly promotes the healthier content of Omega 3- and the ower staurated fat content. It is www.eatwild.com I can't remember right now where the nutritional value tables are located but they might be in different journals and books. I will post them as my time allows.

As a general statement the genetics of commercial broilers do predispose them to fat and lethargy but they do not have to be grown to their extreme genetic potential, which I think is unhealthy. I know quite a few people who have excessive problems with their broilers, but I don't. Giving them a couple of extra weeks to grow out promotes a leaner broiler. They show as much interest in grazing and eating insects as my layers do. Many of them will range with my other chickens. Of course if I fed them 50 pounds a day, they would eat it, but I don't want to. Again, this goes back to the difference between a small family-based operation and a commerical one. Actually my layers have more fat than the broilers- I believe that has to do with their ability to brood for the period it takes to hatch their eggs without eating as much as other times.

Rabbits are still much healthier than other commercially raised meats and they will remain healthier until someone discovers yet another inhumane way to breed them to death and genetically alter their growth. I have heard of growers raising them in communal pastures but I don't do that. Not yet. As I said, they are healthier as it is.

We covered wild prey in a thread not too long ago. I don't recommend it but at the same time I acknowledge others who have grown their reptiles on thawed wild prey. Personally I will feed my snakes and my family domestic pasture -raised animals. It is the reason I moved out to the country.

I have a lot of links to locate and I definietly want to locate them and post them but right now I am pressed for time and we have a delicate time to go through in the next few days.
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Marcia Pimentel
Tango River Reptiles
GiantFeeders

I appreciate the effort, please take your time, but don't forget to post the links when you get the chance. I'd email you privately, but everyone on this forum has the chance to educate themselves, right?

I would like to know what strain of broilers you are raising. We only grew one type one I was a kid, and their legs were horribly inadequate to sustain their weight, and ended up waddling/flopping around by the time they were 5 weeks. All of our fowl were free range, but we were forced to pen our broilers in the last few weeks before "harvest" because predators were picking them off too easily....broad daylight even!

I raise Cornish Rock X for meat and I feed them moderately to keep them from dying of heart attacks and every other ailment they are prone to. It sounds like you may have raised the same from the descritpion of the leg problems. I prefer them because of their rapid growth. Cornish Rock X's even when moderately fed, are still tender enough for the grill at 6 pounds- can't do that with any other heavy meat breed. By the time it takes others to get to 3 pounds dressed weight, they are too tough for the grill. BUt as I said, I know more people who have only problems with this genetic mutant. Mine still chase bugs, wander around, and fly to roost until they get to about 4 pounds.
-----
Marcia Pimentel
Tango River Reptiles
GiantFeeders

I have learned a lot here about chickens and how they relate to a repiles' diet. Until now I had to rely on my experiences and base my practices on a working common sense and to a smaller degree,... guesswork. But I have always assumed (in recent years, not long ago) that freshly killed, healthy chickens would have a lower Salmonella "count" or "parts per million" than one that had been killed and frozen, or found dead and appeared "fresh". I always figured that the living chickens would have a working resistance to the natural Salmonella in their systems and would thus have a natural balance that maintained a low level of it. But once killed, the Salmonella would have no opposition to its multiplication efforts and it would thus thrive. Ergo; A Salmonella infested chicken after considerable time (couple hours? several hours in ideal temperatures?). Because like all bacteria, Salmonella multiplies at a geometric rate, so the time between moderate levels and total infestation would be short.

I have also always known/suspected (again, in recent years) that when frozen, Salmonella merely remains in a "suspended state" and upon thaw, reanimates and begins to multiply. I based this on the universal need to thoroughly cook even once frozen chicken intended for human consumption.

So with all of this added up, I have avoided using chickens in my snakes' diet since 1990. My logic has been along the lines of,... if there is even minimal risk,.. why take the chance? But now,.... to not only read of those that do feed them with no apparent ill-effects,... but to also get otherwise solid info that validates my best case estimations of safe levels of Salmonella in living chickens,... now I feel I can safely feed personally raised chickens to suppliment my pythons' (and boas) diet.

And to those with a lot of snakes that don't have huge parcels of land,... if you think it's difficult to raise up chickens, it really isn't and it doesn't take a lot of space or time. I used to do it on a fairly large scale in the 80's. You don't even have to maintain or breed adults. The simplest way to do this is to buy surplus cockerels from a local chicken breeder and to raise them up. It's cheap and easy and you end up with lots of snake food costing you roughly 30 cents a pound worst case scenario. If anyone wants me to expand on exactly how to do this I can post a seperate thread about it and go into detail. Let me know.

As for your lost post Marcia,... man,. that does suck. It happened to me once about a month ago. It seems that when a post takes a considerable length of time that the kingsnake website re-requires ones' password, and so all text is lost. So now, whenever I have a post that is longer than a paragraph or two (like this one) I copy it with my mouse in case that ever happens again. This was actually my wife's idea, to give her due credit for a great idea that is seemingly simple, yet the obviousness of it escaped me . So if it ever dumps my post, I can simply repaste my text. So you may want to consider trying this.

Again, thanks for all this useful data. Keep it coming.

>>This is long and winding but I hope useful: First, I apologize for the delay in this post. I replied to the original thread Friday morning, but after spending close to three hours looking for the links to back up my message- it did not post That was probably my fault- at the time I was working on little sleep.
>>The recent study I spoke about has not been published. I cannot provide a link. It was discussed with me in a personal conversation with a poultry nutritionist in Iowa. The link that I can provide (one of several but I don't have the time to search for all of them again right now) is the study that brought me to ask the questions about salmonella at the farm level. It is a surprising study with some insight for this subject though it was conducted on hogs by the University of Illinois. Most salmonella studies begin at the processing plant. Very few begin at the farm- only a couple to my knowledge, but this isn't my field. That said, I have only a lay persons understanding of disease and risk factors- my knowledge has been acquired through personal readings and personal interviews.
>>http://nationalhogfarmer.com/ar/farming_antibiotic_resistance_theories/index.htm
>>
>>The reason most studies begin at the processing plant (the landmark WHO study, for instance) is that salmonella is endemic to factory farm operations and these studies are conducted for human disease risk, so the processing plant is the logical starting point. Chickens, like reptiles, can manage well with salmonella and other supposedly harmful bacteria in their systems. It is only when the butchering process begins that the bacteria explodes in growth. Once dead, the carcass is exposed to many conditions at the processing plant that spread salmonella from carcass to carcass and even from infected workers to clean carcasses. Salmonella is handled within the human consumption market by cooking (as someone mentioned- people in parts of the U.S. eat all sorts of wild prey but humans cook it first). Freezing doesn't kill salmonella. Never refreeze a chicken if a reptile refuses it. Salmonella goes dormant in a frozen state but it returns to life and multiplies when thawed. Each time you thaw, you essentially have a carcass with more bacteria. A chicken, thawed for the first time, has a moderate amount of salmonella. A freshly killed chicken has only that bacteria that the live chicken had. The longer between killing and feeding, the more bacteria. Starting out with a healthy chicken is a relatively safe feeding for a reptile as is feeding a freshly thawed chicken. Now I do not know if Salmonella is endemic to all chickens or if a moderate amount of the bacteria present in a carcass is dangerous to a reptile. I can only say that after a couple of years of feeding chickens I have found the results very satisfying in my colony. I've never seen vomiting or diarhea in my snakes from feeding chickens (diarhea did occur at the initial switching time but not after).
>>Royer posted nutritional values of several prey in the original thread. His values are probably correct for farmed animals- but, pasture raising and other more natural means of raising animals for meat have proven that the nutritional values are different than factory farmed animals. One of the reasons that rabbits have such high protein to fat and low cholesterol is that, so far, rabbit growers have not found the means to exploit rabbit farming the way others have for pork, chicken, and beef. Rabbits are still grown in more or less natural ways by small family farms. Pature raised hogs, chicken, and cattle are much healthier and leaner animals to feed a family than their commercially produced counterparts, which are fattened with grains and steroids prior to slaughter. If anyone is interested in the nutritional value of pasture raised livestock, I will locate the links for you as time allows- please e-mail me. Of course the nutrtional values will be for dressed carcasses and not whole animals, again we are dealing with a human market not a reptile market.
>>The clincher for all of this, as far as reptile nutrition is concerned, is that a keeper should begin with a healthy source of prey. Locating a small farm within driving distance to one's home is important if one can't grow the prey- even if it is a considerable driving distance. This is probably something that few people give thought to when purchasing a Burmese python, but it is just as important as safe housing, imo.
>>Given the choice between raising chickens and rabbits- I would choose rabbits. They are far easier to raise in terms of labor though as Brian mentioned they are cheaper to raise in terms of feed and equipment. Chickens are labor intensive to raise properly- they destroy pasture in a short time and the profit margin is narrow because of competition from factory farmed alternatives which are much cheaper and less labor intensive (since they are never cleaned out and crammed in little cages for their entire lives).
>>A few rules to follow if one decides to feed chickens:
>>1) Purchase from a family farm with a free range flock.
>>2) Never refreeze a thawed carcass
>>3) Do not feed supermarket processed chicken.
>>4) Feed in the constrictor's cage as opposed to moving him or her back to the cage after feeding- beaks and claws can rupture the intestinal wall.
>>5) Start with a smaller chicken than a rabbit would have been comparatively - to allow for the digestive upset that comes from switching)
>>I hope this has been helpful. Once the complete study has been published I will post a link to it. I don't think it will show anything different than common sense will tell us....
>>-----
>>Marcia Pimentel
>>Tango River Reptiles
>>GiantFeeders
-----
It isn't "Ideas" that fail or succeed,... it is the "Sytstems" which are instilled to launch and sustain the idea that either fail or succeed.>[Me.]

Here is a link where you can order chicks to raise up.They seem to be fairly cheap.They grow quickly.

>>I have learned a lot here about chickens and how they relate to a repiles' diet. Until now I had to rely on my experiences and base my practices on a working common sense and to a smaller degree,... guesswork. But I have always assumed (in recent years, not long ago) that freshly killed, healthy chickens would have a lower Salmonella "count" or "parts per million" than one that had been killed and frozen, or found dead and appeared "fresh". I always figured that the living chickens would have a working resistance to the natural Salmonella in their systems and would thus have a natural balance that maintained a low level of it. But once killed, the Salmonella would have no opposition to its multiplication efforts and it would thus thrive. Ergo; A Salmonella infested chicken after considerable time (couple hours? several hours in ideal temperatures?). Because like all bacteria, Salmonella multiplies at a geometric rate, so the time between

moderate levels and total infestation would be short.

>>
>>I have also always known/suspected (again, in recent years) that when frozen, Salmonella merely remains in a "suspended state" and upon thaw, reanimates and begins to multiply. I based this on the universal need to thoroughly cook even once frozen chicken intended for human consumption.
>>
>>So with all of this added up, I have avoided using chickens in my snakes' diet since 1990. My logic has been along the lines of,... if there is even minimal risk,.. why take the chance? But now,.... to not only read of those that do feed them with no apparent ill-effects,... but to also get otherwise solid info that validates my best case estimations of safe levels of Salmonella in living chickens,... now I feel I can safely feed personally raised chickens to suppliment my pythons' (and boas) diet.
>>
>>And to those with a lot of snakes that don't have huge parcels of land,... if you think it's difficult to raise up chickens, it really isn't and it doesn't take a lot of space or time. I used to do it on a fairly large scale in the 80's. You don't even have to maintain or breed adults. The simplest way to do this is to buy surplus cockerels from a local chicken breeder and to raise them up. It's cheap and easy and you end up with lots of snake food costing you roughly 30 cents a pound worst case scenario. If anyone wants me to expand on exactly how to do this I can post a seperate thread about it and go into detail. Let me know.
>>
>>As for your lost post Marcia,... man,. that does suck. It happened to me once about a month ago. It seems that when a post takes a considerable length of time that the kingsnake website re-requires ones' password, and so all text is lost. So now, whenever I have a post that is longer than a paragraph or two (like this one) I copy it with my mouse in case that ever happens again. This was actually my wife's idea, to give her due credit for a great idea that is seemingly simple, yet the obviousness of it escaped me . So if it ever dumps my post, I can simply repaste my text. So you may want to consider trying this.
>>
>>Again, thanks for all this useful data. Keep it coming.
>>
>>
>>>>This is long and winding but I hope useful: First, I apologize for the delay in this post. I replied to the original thread Friday morning, but after spending close to three hours looking for the links to back up my message- it did not post That was probably my fault- at the time I was working on little sleep.
>>>>The recent study I spoke about has not been published. I cannot provide a link. It was discussed with me in a personal conversation with a poultry nutritionist in Iowa. The link that I can provide (one of several but I don't have the time to search for all of them again right now) is the study that brought me to ask the questions about salmonella at the farm level. It is a surprising study with some insight for this subject though it was conducted on hogs by the University of Illinois. Most salmonella studies begin at the processing plant. Very few begin at the farm- only a couple to my knowledge, but this isn't my field. That said, I have only a lay persons understanding of disease and risk factors- my knowledge has been acquired through personal readings and personal interviews.
>>>>http://nationalhogfarmer.com/ar/farming_antibiotic_resistance_theories/index.htm
>>>>
>>>>The reason most studies begin at the processing plant (the landmark WHO study, for instance) is that salmonella is endemic to factory farm operations and these studies are conducted for human disease risk, so the processing plant is the logical starting point. Chickens, like reptiles, can manage well with salmonella and other supposedly harmful bacteria in their systems. It is only when the butchering process begins that the bacteria explodes in growth. Once dead, the carcass is exposed to many conditions at the processing plant that spread salmonella from carcass to carcass and even from infected workers to clean carcasses. Salmonella is handled within the human consumption market by cooking (as someone mentioned- people in parts of the U.S. eat all sorts of wild prey but humans cook it first). Freezing doesn't kill salmonella. Never refreeze a chicken if a reptile refuses it. Salmonella goes dormant in a frozen state but it returns to life and multiplies when thawed. Each time you thaw, you essentially have a carcass with more bacteria. A chicken, thawed for the first time, has a moderate amount of salmonella. A freshly killed chicken has only that bacteria that the live chicken had. The longer between killing and feeding, the more bacteria. Starting out with a healthy chicken is a relatively safe feeding for a reptile as is feeding a freshly thawed chicken. Now I do not know if Salmonella is endemic to all chickens or if a moderate amount of the bacteria present in a carcass is dangerous to a reptile. I can only say that after a couple of years of feeding chickens I have found the results very satisfying in my colony. I've never seen vomiting or diarhea in my snakes from feeding chickens (diarhea did occur at the initial switching time but not after).
>>>>Royer posted nutritional values of several prey in the original thread. His values are probably correct for farmed animals- but, pasture raising and other more natural means of raising animals for meat have proven that the nutritional values are different than factory farmed animals. One of the reasons that rabbits have such high protein to fat and low cholesterol is that, so far, rabbit growers have not found the means to exploit rabbit farming the way others have for pork, chicken, and beef. Rabbits are still grown in more or less natural ways by small family farms. Pature raised hogs, chicken, and cattle are much healthier and leaner animals to feed a family than their commercially produced counterparts, which are fattened with grains and steroids prior to slaughter. If anyone is interested in the nutritional value of pasture raised livestock, I will locate the links for you as time allows- please e-mail me. Of course the nutrtional values will be for dressed carcasses and not whole animals, again we are dealing with a human market not a reptile market.
>>>>The clincher for all of this, as far as reptile nutrition is concerned, is that a keeper should begin with a healthy source of prey. Locating a small farm within driving distance to one's home is important if one can't grow the prey- even if it is a considerable driving distance. This is probably something that few people give thought to when purchasing a Burmese python, but it is just as important as safe housing, imo.
>>>>Given the choice between raising chickens and rabbits- I would choose rabbits. They are far easier to raise in terms of labor though as Brian mentioned they are cheaper to raise in terms of feed and equipment. Chickens are labor intensive to raise properly- they destroy pasture in a short time and the profit margin is narrow because of competition from factory farmed alternatives which are much cheaper and less labor intensive (since they are never cleaned out and crammed in little cages for their entire lives).
>>>>A few rules to follow if one decides to feed chickens:
>>>>1) Purchase from a family farm with a free range flock.
>>>>2) Never refreeze a thawed carcass
>>>>3) Do not feed supermarket processed chicken.
>>>>4) Feed in the constrictor's cage as opposed to moving him or her back to the cage after feeding- beaks and claws can rupture the intestinal wall.
>>>>5) Start with a smaller chicken than a rabbit would have been comparatively - to allow for the digestive upset that comes from switching)
>>>>I hope this has been helpful. Once the complete study has been published I will post a link to it. I don't think it will show anything different than common sense will tell us....
>>>>-----
>>>>Marcia Pimentel
>>>>Tango River Reptiles
>>>>GiantFeeders
>>-----
>>It isn't "Ideas" that fail or succeed,... it is the "Sytstems" which are instilled to launch and sustain the idea that either fail or succeed.>[Me.]
Link

-----
Thomas Jones
aligatorhunter@earthlink.net

The impossible is often the untried!!!

Your welcome Brian. I've enjoyed the discussion. As for the post on Friday - that was exactly what happened, LOL. When I hit the submit botton, I was returned to the log in screen and my post disappeared. I will copy from now on thanks for the advice.
-----
Marcia Pimentel
Tango River Reptiles
GiantFeeders

I have enjoyed following your discussion of diets for large pythons, and the nutritional composition of various foods such as chickens and rabbits. There is a lot of food for thought in these threads. I would caution readers not to assume, however, that because something is thought to be good for a human diet, that it naturally follows that this would be true for a python diet

I’m neither a biologist nor a nutritionist, but I am unaware of any long-term, controlled feeding studies of snakes from birth to death which could scientifically answer questions regarding their maintenance, much less reproductive, nutritional requirements. So I would think that the assumption that one would naturally prefer an animal food source with the highest protein and lowest fat composition has yet to be demonstrated. And although we should always strive to feed our snakes as “clean” a food source as possible, one can’t deny that these creatures have evolved to consume other animals (sometimes long-dead scavenged carcasses) with bacteria species and counts that would kill a human in short order.

My point? Keep the anecdotal information coming, and also feel free to extrapolate from studies on the needs of other life forms. But be flexible and don’t present or take all such speculation as gospel. For myself, I’m thankful that I got interested in reptiles which consume whole animals. Now lizards and tortoises, on the other hand - they’re difficult to feed.

-Joan

>>I have enjoyed following your discussion of diets for large pythons, and the nutritional composition of various foods such as chickens and rabbits. There is a lot of food for thought in these threads. I would caution readers not to assume, however, that because something is thought to be good for a human diet, that it naturally follows that this would be true for a python diet
>>
>>I’m neither a biologist nor a nutritionist, but I am unaware of any long-term, controlled feeding studies of snakes from birth to death which could scientifically answer questions regarding their maintenance, much less reproductive, nutritional requirements. So I would think that the assumption that one would naturally prefer an animal food source with the highest protein and lowest fat composition has yet to be demonstrated. And although we should always strive to feed our snakes as “clean” a food source as possible, one can’t deny that these creatures have evolved to consume other animals (sometimes long-dead scavenged carcasses) with bacteria species and counts that would kill a human in short order.
>>
>>My point? Keep the anecdotal information coming, and also feel free to extrapolate from studies on the needs of other life forms. But be flexible and don’t present or take all such speculation as gospel. For myself, I’m thankful that I got interested in reptiles which consume whole animals. Now lizards and tortoises, on the other hand - they’re difficult to feed.
>>
>>-Joan
-----
It isn't "Ideas" that fail or succeed,... it is the "Sytstems" which are instilled to launch and sustain the idea that either fail or succeed.>[Me.]

This is one of the most frustrating things I've encountered in my studies so far. Take the calcium/phosphorus requirements for example. It's widely accepted that a ratio of 1:1 or 2:1 is healthy. Why? Because that's the ratio present in our bodies (true for most animals) But, that's a ratio. How MUCH? do they need? Nobody says. I would suspect that an animal that is growing and laying down so much new bone growth would need more, right? Very frustrating, and just one example of a hundred. I guess that's the exciting part of being on the budding end of reptile husbandry.

I would not go so far as to say it is anecdotal - in the trite sense of the word-since for many of us the proof is in the keeping, where it may stay for a very long time to come before studies are conducted on our captives, but you are right. We can't get passed the mainly USDA studies that focus on human nutrition. I is anecdotal, as a lot of husbandry information has been throughout the years. Discussions like this help people define for themselves what is a good method for them. Perhaps the focus of my argument should be healthy prey for healthy captives- that is really the underlying topic to all this nutrition talk. While we have no scientific study, we do have proof before our eyes of whether our feeding methods help or hurt our captives. Common sense goes a long way to clarify this, I think, but nutrition is not my field. As for feeding carrion in captive conditions- I am of the group that thinks that mimicking wild conditions in captivity has its boundaries.
-----
Marcia Pimentel
Tango River Reptiles
GiantFeeders

I forgot to mention, the study I mentioned that was published by the USDA was entitled "Nutritional Content of Whole Vertebrate Prey Fed in Zoos", so I'm not talking about humans here. Unfortunately, most of the info available is based on human nutrition.

That is a valuable study. I saved it to my hard disk on one of the ocassions you posted the information. Gives me the idea to start working on available zoo information
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Marcia Pimentel
Tango River Reptiles
GiantFeeders

Marcia,

Please keep me in mind as you come across more/new info, and I'll do the same. My email is kproyer@yahoo.com.

thanks,

Kassandra Royer

Kassandra, I've got you in my address book now. My e-mail is presocratk@yahoo.com
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Marcia Pimentel
Tango River Reptiles
GiantFeeders