Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have had my vine snake for 4 years now. I fed him 1-2 anoles weekly. I gut-loaded my crickets, fed them to the anoles and then fed the anoles to my snake. My vine snake is in excellent condition...

I custom-made my own enclosure for him. I later bought a 65 gallon arboreal aquarium and decided to put my vine snake in it. I couldn't keep the humidity high in the new cage like my old cage. My snake went into a shed and I picked him up one day to see that he had a very bad retained shed and an infection underneath his eye on both sides.

I got him to shed, but he had mouth-rot from the infections around his eyes. I had to clean out the infected area daily...........so, I placed him in snake rack with newspaper and just a waterbowl. He healed perfectly and he was off feed for a little over 1 month while in his rack cage to heal.

One day, I bought live feeder mice for my neonate Asian red-tail ratsnake I had just bought. I fed out all the mice and I had 1 left. I jokingly placed the mouse in my vine snake's cage (it has always been a joke with the people I work with, that on feeding day, they tell me they fed my vine snake 4 mice).

Wham! My vine snake grabbed the mouse and ate it!!! My snake was so hungry, I think he didn't care about movement like it normally does when not sick. The mouse's fidgity movement was enough to spark my snake to grab the mouse.

My vine snake has been on mice ever since. Not only does this make feeding more convenient and less expensive. But, I've noticed a much girthier snake since switching to mice. No matter how well you take care of anoles, they are still wild-caught lizards for a snake to eat. My snake looks bigger, healthier and it is less a headache to get food for him.

My only thought is: despite that mice are good food for my benefit...............will mice every time be good or bad for my snake? Sure, my snake can eat them. But, I doubt vine snakes like to eat mice readily in the wild? It would be neat to find out how the long-term effects of feeding mice to my snake will bring. I think large, female vine snakes eat mice/rats in the wild.........but, males areget only 3 ft. long. It is just interesting no matter what!

Yours is a cool story Justin; especially how you were able to nurse your snake back to 100% after the infection. I am no expert but I can't imagine any nutritional downside to rodents over retilian prey except the caloric density and the attendant potential for obesity. Not only are mice more convinent, they don't pose the risk of parasite infection that lizards do, espcially if one can get the animal to accept f/t mice.
Anyway, you and Robert below give me hope and enthusiam for my plan. Many thanks to the both of you for sharing your experince.
Bill

I've heard that some herps that aren't acustom to eating animals with fur, will have problems with it in the long term, something about being able to digest or process it, taxes their system. Maybe impactions? I don't know, it's something to consider though.

Copy that. Thanks Rick