Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just saw this ad in a reptile magazine. Posted it for everybodies information and comment.

I was wondering if the snakes got enough calcium & phosporus? Anyone care to comment, guess, speculate..

Cheers!

Al
Reptile Diet

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Save a Rattlesnake...Skin a Sweetwater Resident!

I've heard of these before, and have that edition of REPTILES awaiting me on the kitchen table

1.5 to 1 Calcium/Phosphorus ratio is a little low I believe, but sustainable. You would have to measure the correlation between the usable calcium and vitamin D3 (also on ingredient list) to see if it offers optimum calcium absorption. Otherwise, the Ca ratio in the food might not be what is absorbed.

If you are considering this as an alternative food source, perhaps contact that email link (zoovet@reptilenutrition or somthing like that) and request data from their feeding trials. If they send you something please share

For snakes that have rather slim dietary variation (mammals are mammals) then the use of a commercial diet is of lesser value than per say it would be for a dog. The eventual goal is to have an easily available, nutritionally complete meal. Well, we already have that with rodents.

put a mouse or a pinky in a blender and done a dietary breakdown of their components? How can we really compare what the sausages have to offer to the real thing?
Maybe if they are fairly cheap, they'd be good substitutes to stretch out the poor size of mice from the store. I'd be willing to try them out, but prolly wouldnt feed them to a....say, for instance, recovering female after laying eggs or dropping young.
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Tom
TCJ Herps
"The more people I meet, the more I like my snakes"

Tom:

I was thinking the same thing.

Al
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Save a Rattlesnake...Skin a Sweetwater Resident!

The answer to the rodent/blender fiasco is yes, it has been done. I have it in my notes from last weeks class, if interested I"ll post it.

I'm sure that these sausage things are pretty darn close to the real thing. Although if I was going to produce such a thing I'd probably use rodents instead of beef. That is my main question, is the source of ingredients. Is this just the scraps off the kill floor? It sure would be cheaper than making a rat sausage. Additional questions I have pertain to the fact that the two first ingredients are beef (the meat) and beef heart. After that, the ingredients are all meant to "supplement" this inbalanced staple. This recipe begs for miniscule mistakes to be made.

Other factors are unknown. For instance, we (nutritionists) have a good understanding of pretty much every component of food and physiology, BUT, discoveries are still made, perhaps most recent are the anti-oxidants and the their affects on free radicals withen the body. (Who knew random missile electrons were a problem!) All in all, we don't know everything and that leaves room for error when trying to chemically make a complete diet. As long as rodents breed like rodents, I'll be feeding whole body prey

Hey Joe...

Post it...."The answer to the rodent/blender fiasco is yes, it has been done." It could become a classic...Like Saturday Nite Live's "Bass-a matic" Skit...

Al
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Save a Rattlesnake...Skin a Sweetwater Resident!

I really should sign my name after my posts, it's actually Ian
Joeysgreen came up a long time ago when I first got the internet and a green phelsuma named Joey was next to my computer... The name has just stuck!

The darn thing won't let me cut and paste.. here's a small chart , some of which you may have seen before.

Food Item____Dry Matter%__Protein%__Fat%_EnergyKcal/g__Ca%__P%_Ca Ratio
Mealworms______42.2________52.8_____35 _____6.53_____0.06_0.53 _0.11
Locusts________31.2________61.7_____19.4_____-________0.1__0.75 _0.13
Crickets_______38.2________55.3_____30.2_____-________0.23_0.74 _0.31
Earthworms_____22__________49.9_____5.8______-________0.59_0.85 _0.69
Chicken Muscle_25.6________20.5_____4.3______1.21_____0.01_0.2 _0.05
Egg, Whole_____25.2________12.3_____10.9_____1.47_____0.05_0.22 _0.02
Mice, 1-2days__-___________-________-________- _______1.6__1.8 _0.88
Mice, Adult____-___________19.86____8.81_____2.07_____0.84_0.61 _1.37

Okay, so it turns out kinda waivy but I hope the information is readable and interesting because it sure was hard to try and get everything semi-aligned