Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have plenty of rats in my backyard and I am thinking of using a rat trap to catch/kill them then feed them to my snakes. I think not only it will save me some money on feeders but reduce the pest population in the wild. Any thoughts?

Unless the snakes are local WC snakes, you would be introducing parasites that the snakes may be unable to deal with, so it generally is not considered a good idea.

That said, I have offered my WC Great Basin Gopher snake WC deer mice from the same general (within aprox. 1 mile radius) locality of capture. In fact, I currently have two deer mice waiting to be eaten, when my extremely finicky snake decides to eat again.

Also, scroll down to, and read, the thread titled "Wild Caught Mice?" dated Sept. 21, 2010.

Thanks for the response. Anyway, last night I set a rat trap in the shed in the backyard and 15min. later I heard a click. I checked it out but it didn't catch anything. I figured then I have mice since the rap trap is too big to catch mice. I set up a mouse trap there after and a couple hours later I checked nothing. So this morning I checked again, and sure enough, it was a mouse. I would say the mouse was dead for 8 hours top.

I then fed it to my ball and he ate it. If he gets sick I will let everyone know but so far of all the sites I have read I haven't came across one that says their snake got sick because of it. All the people who actually fed their snakes WC all posted no problem so we shall see if my experience will be consistent.

Peromyscus mice can carry Hanta-virus....no cure...
I would not keep, touch, use wild deer mice.....
I use domesticated Peromyscus .....work well.....
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........JY