Feeding question

[wizbit13]

I was reading a thread on another forum last night, which was on about vitamin supplements being fed to snakes or added to their food. Apparently some guy has done tests where he has added supplements to the food of one snake and not to the other and the growth difference between the two is massive. He also states that by feeding frozen thawed to your snakes that they are not getting the 'contents' of the rat or mouse of which it would be eating in the wild. eg. a rat or mouse in the wild would have a belly full of grass or insects or whatever else that they may have eaten before it was consumed by the snake, and apparently this makes a lot of difference. Also that by freezing rodents that it actually takes all the vitamin contents out. I would just like everybodys thoughts on this. Does anyone here add supplements to their rats or mice??

Cheers

Adam

[rmestre]

Many people are on the fence about this. Some claim you should only give snakes supplements if they are ill. Some say to do it every time you feed. Some say it is not needed for a healthy snake. Freezing does not remove the vitamins and nutrients, it may degrade them some but not remove them. As with our food, steak, chicken and such. So a proper diet would be fine.

I would love to read this article and maybe add it to my site if you can tell me how to locate it.

The thing is the age of snake, sex, prior health of both snakes, living conditions (tank size, humidity, etc) would all have to be exactly the same to come to this conclusion. And even then you would need multiple trials before you can come to a concrete conclusion.

Thank you for posting this, Im sure many people are interested in this subject.

[wizbit13]

Well I was bored out of my skull the night I found this post, and I have looked on every forum possible and cant find it again!! Im quite naffed off beacuse I would have liked to have read any replies that may have been posted on it. The discussion was started by someone who apparently had a snake split open with old age as it was eating, and after 20 odd years of snake keeping a loads of experience he found that lack of vitamins and whatever else snakes get out of eating live, wild food was the cause to it. Now I am not saying that I agree with any of this. Im very new to this whole snake keeping thing, thats why I just wondered what everyone else thinks?

Adam