Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello, Ratsnakers,

In Walls's book on Ratsnakes, he recommends dusting rodents with vitamins/calcium, and also recommends full spectrum lighting.

Do you keepers of yellow, everglades, bubblegum, black rats do this?

Thanks!

fliptop

why would they need calcium? I mean come on they're eating whole mice/rats! Including the bones! Now if these guys are digesting the bones, why would they need more calcium? (also are snakes able to ingest stuff through their skin? I havent heard of that before..)

Full spectrum lighting will do nothing more than make them prettier to the eye. you put a full spectrum (for a flourescent this is referred to as a spectrum 5 bulb), you will get all the colors a lot stronger than you will if you put a regular cool white flourescent (or the like.) I actually do have mine under full spectrum bulbs, because when I built my cages it only cost me $2/fixture more to get those with full spectrum bulbs. I notice a very little difference.
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-Chris

The reason mainstream thought is thought of as a stream is because it's so shallow. -George Carlin

A fool doesn't learn. A smart man learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others. Which one are you?

My Website
N. American Rat/Corn snake care sheet I wrote
Information on substrates

Current snakes:
0.1 Licorice Stick Black Rat (Lola)
1.0 Black Rat (Frankie)
0.1 Texas Bairdi (Rosa)
0.1 Blue Beauty (Brunhilde)
1.0 Green Tree Python (Monty)

I personally don't and I don't believe many others do either. Most people use rack systems these days, so lighting isn't a big issue. Certain UV wavelengths are thought to promote more natural behaviors in some reptiles and some reptiles do benefit from full spectrum lighting and/or require it. I think the current mindset is that many snake species are nocturnal or secretive enough to get little natural sunlight in the wild, so it shouldn't be crucial in captivity. It certainly seems that they don't need supplmental calcium in most cases depending on their prey items, but it can't hurt to offer gravid females additional calcium when they're forming eggs. That's my understanding of the issue anyway, but everyone has their own opinion.

The Wall's book has a noticable European feel to it, although I have no idea where he is from. They have much different husbandry philosophies than us.

Regarding the calcium dusting, the idea behind it is that wild prey items have much more calcium than rodents raised in captivity. Moreover, there is a notion that they recieve more bio-available calcium in nature due to eating a variety of prey.

I don't know how much I buy this, however, as I would suspect that snakes in the wild are more likely to catch young prey with less than completely developed bones.

Captive rodents do tend to show osteoporosis to some degree, presumably due to their sedentary habits, so who knows?

Regarding the full spectrum lighting, I do suspect there are benefits but that they are much less significant in heliophilic lizards, for example. I gather there are foreign language papers in Europe providing some support to this idea. Wish I could find translations.

And on a similar note, nocturnal geckos have apparent benefits from exposure to UV light. After all they are not all going deep underground during the day. So I'm not so sure the crepuscular argument holds up.

I'll leave with one last comment. I got a tour of the preserved (i.e. wet) collection at the Field Museum in Chicago. I got to talk to the head PhD guy for hours, it was a great experience.

He pointed out that any decent comparative anatomist could tell the difference between a snake raised in captivity vs. one that was captured in the field. I believe the main difference was bone development - the captive specimens were much "worse".

Now whether calcium supplementation or full spectrum lighting would have any positive effect on this is another question. For all we know it could make the situation worse. That would be a bit counter-intuitive, but we really don't know.
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Current snakes:

0.2 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Silver/Yellow)

3.3 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Green)

2.1 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black)

3.3 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black & Tan)

left out word added in CAPS.

>>Regarding the full spectrum lighting, I do suspect there are benefits but that they are much less significant THAN in heliophilic lizards, for example.
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Current snakes:

0.2 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Silver/Yellow)

3.3 Gonyosoma oxycephala - (Green)

2.1 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black)

3.3 Gonyosoma janseni - (Black & Tan)

If you are speaking of the book "Rat Snakes, A Hobbyist's Guide to Elaphe and Kin" by Walls and Staszko, they do not recommend calcium supplements, but they do recommend vitamin D3 to aid with calcium absorption. They suggest that you inject it into the prey item just before feeding it to your snake. That is easy to do if you are feeding your snakes F/T.

I don't give my snakes full spectrum light or vitamins, and they are all healthy and doing just fine.

By the way, it is a very good book with a lot of useful information. Some of it is a little dated, (the U.S. edition was published in 1994) but it is still worth having.

Elaphefan, the book I'm referring to is just called RAT SNAKES and states all rat snakes need regular vitamin and calcium supplements, and young should have pinkies dusted with vitamins and calcium at each meal.

As I search out my next charge, I wanted to know what is common successful practice regarding lighting and feeding, and you all have been extremely helpful.

Thanks,

fliptop

I checked, and it is the same author, but not the same book. The book that I spoke of is a hardcover book with over 200 pages. I have no idea why his two books give differing recommendations.

He does say in my book that you would use a calcium supplement if you did not feed your snake whole animals. He also recommends against that practice.