Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi, I posted a week or so ago about adopting a corn snake from my local shelter. I brought it home a few days ago and fed it a pinky yesterday, which he readily ate
I wanted to buy some prekilled frozen pinkies online, it was a bit of an ordeal finding them at a local pet store, but the minimum order is 100 pinkies. I don't mind buying that many, I have the freezer space, but I'm not sure how quickly he/she will out grow them. Will it cause detrimental health problems to keep feeding him pinkies even if he can eat larger food?
I'm currently reading The Corn Snake Manual and I have an appointment with a herp vet in 2 weeks for a check up. I still have a lot of questions about feeding, any input would be appreciated.
Thanks

>Will it cause detrimental health problems to keep feeding him pinkies even if he can eat larger food?

No. You just have to feed more of them to provide enough food. And I'd occasionally give larger food, too, so he isn't 100% fixated on pinkies.

How long is the snake? He might be big enough to eat fuzzies by now. I used to have a corn that wouldn't take pinkie mice but loved pinkie rats. It's pretty impressive to see a 14 inch corn snake swallow a pinkie rat, which is bigger than a fuzzy mouse.

You might also look around for someone to share the order.

Paul Hollander

I knew I forgot something, he/she is about 16 inches long and a little less that 1/2 inch wide. When you feed them more often, do you feed them more than one pinkie at a time or just more frequently?
Thanks!

>>I knew I forgot something, he/she is about 16 inches long and a little less that 1/2 inch wide. When you feed them more often, do you feed them more than one pinkie at a time or just more frequently?
>>Thanks!

Get a fuzzy from your local supplier. If your snake will eat it then you would probably do better getting 100 fuzzies. A little bigger and a little more nutrition when the snake gets larger.
just a thought.

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Jimmy (draybar)

Thank you all for your helpful replies. I was thinking that he needed to be or would soon need to be on fuzzies, so i'll order those.
Thanks

Eventually your snake will outgrow fuzzies, too. When that happens, if you still have fuzzies to feed off, give him two or more in the same meal. He will swallow the first, wait til that is down in his stomach (less than 1 minute), and swallow the second. The goal is to produce a visible bulge in the snake's stomach. If one item doesn't do it, give two. If two doesn't do it, give three or more. When I was keeping bullsnakes, I'd put a pile of half a dozen dead mice in the cage, and the bullsnake would swallow them one after another. Corn snakes will do the same with appropriately sized prey. It's just usually cheaper to feed one item that is of appropriate size rather than several smaller items. Good luck.

Paul Hollander

At 16" your snake can(and should)already
be off pinkies, and eating large fuzzies.
These older mice will not only "fill him up" better, they are higher in calcium.