What do you feed hatchling snakes

[Snakefood]

i am thinking on getting a hatchling Corn or BP. What prey items are small enough for hatchling snakes?

[infernalis]

Pinkies (Newborn mice or rats)

[NennaMeerkat]

Corns you do pinky mice. As for BP's I think I have heard of rat pups since they are ready to go to rats pretty quickly and you don't want to have to worry about switching them from mouse to rat.

[Snakefood]

Yes, I have heard they are hard to switch from mouse to rat, I also breed my own rats, but would have to get a breeding pair/trio of mice in order to go that small of a prey.

So for a corn, I would have to go down to mice pinkies, and for a BP I could use rat pinkies??

HMMMM

Pulling towards the BP!!

[Lankyrob]

If you get a slightly older corn - say three or four months it may well be able to take rat pinks at that point. I know my guys took some rat pinks in ther first 6-8 months as the shop didnt have mouse pinks at that point in time.

[Snakefood]

I found both a BP breeder and a Corn breeder right here in my area!! After more research and discussion with my hubby, I am pulling towards the cornsnake for my first darlin.

I am not completely sure how old the batch of Corns he is selling are, just waiting for him to get back to me. He has baby Reverse Okeetee and Albino Okeetee for $70 and they are gorgeous!!!!!!!

I'll have to ask him what they are feeding on at the moment.

[SnakeyJay]

Just remember to give each its own seperate enclosure :)

[NennaMeerkat]

It may be hard to switch a snake from mouse to rat but not impossible! From what I understand it is only BP's that seem to really have a problem. Haven't heard anyone trying to switch to rats for corns but having owned two in the past it seemed they were rather uncaring what it was they ate. And sometimes we fed small rats to them for the same reason Lanky stated...stores not having what we normally got. But it wasn't very often at all.

[Snakefood]

But if a Corn gets to be 4+ feet long, wouldn't mice be way too small prey for them? I figured that eventually mice would be too small for a Corn and we would have to switch to rats, so why not start there. (plus of course the easy availablity of rats, whereas I would have to go buy mice!)

[infernalis]

My corn takes baby rats.. it's all I feed him.

[Snakefood]

My corn takes baby rats.. it's all I feed him.


How old is your Corn and how long has it been taking baby rats? And are we talking pinkie, fuzzy, hopper??

[bigsnakegirl785]

I'm lucky, I never really had problems feeding my BP, he just doesn't want to stick to a schedule. lol

[Lankyrob]

My adult corn takes one XL mouse every two weeks - he is full grown and on a weight maintenance diet. Corns can live on mice all their lives without issue tho sometimes he may get a relative sized rat if the right sizxed mouse is unavailable.

[Snakefood]

Well my reasoning on the mouse/rat thing is that I would either have to add mouse breeders to my operation (which is already quite sizable with my rats, rabbits, ect) or go buy feeders (which seems so silly when you SELL snake food)

So, after talking with hubby about it we came to the conclusion that since none of our customers ever ask for mice, we will buy frozen pinkie mice for our corn until he is big enough for pinkie rats, then he is being switched to rats and NO MORE MICE!!