Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Has anyone else had any problems previously about carnivorous feeder mice? I always buy my feeder mice from the same place. I buy 1 small mouse and one fuzzie. In the last month they stopped putting the mice in the same bag because the mouse eats the smaller one. Tonight neither one of my snakes would eat the mice. Both snakes were put back in their seperate cages and I put the mice together. The mouse ate the pinkie. Later I looked at my snake and there is a chink missing out of his side. I was wondering if the mice are possibly too inbred. I am not sure what I should do.

Mice are neat creatures....violent with each other and territorial....they also need a much higher protien diet than rats, and are never afraid of insect or other small animals as potential food, one of the reasons if you feed live that you never leave the snake unattended until the animal is consumed!

If you want to house mice together, 1 they must be of similar age...housing an older animal with a pinky is asking for trouble! 2 they must have plenty of food and water.
Try feeding freshly killed mice to your snake, and if they do not feed, place the mice in a ziplock freezer baggy....thaw and retry in a few days.....

Riley

thanks guys. I have had my snake for 6 months now and had no problems with feeders until yesterday. I am going to switch to frozen and hopefully my snake has no problems with that.

>>Has anyone else had any problems previously about carnivorous feeder mice? I always buy my feeder mice from the same place. I buy 1 small mouse and one fuzzie. In the last month they stopped putting the mice in the same bag because the mouse eats the smaller one. Tonight neither one of my snakes would eat the mice. Both snakes were put back in their seperate cages and I put the mice together. The mouse ate the pinkie. Later I looked at my snake and there is a chink missing out of his side. I was wondering if the mice are possibly too inbred. I am not sure what I should do.

I don't believe you should feed a snake a food item large enough to damage it. When the "right-sized" mouse becomes large enough to bite a snake and injure it, it's time to either switch to frozen, or work to switch the snake to rat pups instead (a rate pup of the same body mass is still a baby, not able to bite and hurt the snake).

In my experience, a mouse will almost always chew on a pinky if they're left together. One's hungry; the other is food.

Terry
Albino Tricolors