To a ravenous snake, anything that moves is fair game, and it is in your best interest to keep fingers and hands out of striking distance. Don’t use your fingers to dangle dinner in front of a hungry snake! Use tongs, tweezers or a hemostat, instead. Most snakes can be easily trained to feed on dead prey. How does one convince a snake to eat a dead rodent? That’s simple! Jiggle the warmed rodent by its tail, and a hungry snake will usually strike at, and then quickly consume it. You can also purchase frozen vacuum-packed rodents through the mail. Many pet stores now offer frozen rodents that simply need defrosting prior to feeding, eliminating purchasing live rodents that need to be killed before feeding. ![]() You should never feed a snake live prey items! I have seen too many snakes with terrible bite wounds along their backs from a hungry rodent left in the cage with a snake that wasn’t hungry. You should always consult with your herp veterinarian prior to doing this, however. This can be rectified by judiciously dusting a calcium supplement onto a pinkie prior to feeding it to your pet snake. If a snake eats pinkies as the sole or major portion of the diet, it may develop a calcium deficiency after a period of time. The bones of a pinkie contain more cartilage and less calcium than the bones of older mice. Pinkies are baby mice, and therefore don’t yet have a well-developed skeletal system. Since snakes usually consume their dinner whole they usually get a good balance of nutrients.Īn exception to this is when a snake is ill or for some other reason, will only consume pinkies. These are different ages and sizes of mice destined to be snake food. You may have seen advertisements for pinkies, fuzzies, hoppers, weanes or weans, smalls and adults. Small snakes eating pinkies usually graduate to consuming older and larger mice. When considering purchasing a snake for a pet, make sure it’s eating at the pet store prior to bringing it home. Snakes in the wild may eat mammals, birds, other reptiles, amphibians, fish, worms and insects. Some snakes start off eating lizards and are switched over to pinkies before being offered for sale in the pet trade. Boas and pythons, which are commonly kept as pets, usually begin eating baby mice, called pinkies. Snakes should be taught to eat dead prey items to prevent dangerous bites from rodents. It’s easy to provide a snake with a balanced diet, since snakes, being carnivores, consume whole prey items.
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