babies took mouse tails

[sschind]

My two baby T. sirtalis parietalis took fish scented mouse tails today. One ate two of them the other one. They took them with no problems. I am going to have to monitor my mouse colonies a little closer for tiny pinkies now. The only problem will be explaining to customers why their frozen mice have no tails. I guess I'll have to use those for my own snakes. Don't want anyone feeling cheated.

[Cazador]

My neighbor just told me he has a bunch of shrews in his garage, so I was thinking of starting a shrew colony :cool:. I bet they'd have TINY babies ;). What do you feed your mice? Is maintenance a big deal?
Rick

[sschind]

I feed my mice a lab rodent diet but I should have made it clear these tails came from frozen rodents :). I've heard shrews are difficult to raise. They are insectivores and they need to eat their weight in food every three hours or so. A friend of mine used to have pygmy mice, those babies were tineeeee, but the monkey pox scare has pretty much made them impossible to get. I may have to check on it now though. I am sure someone still has some hidden away.

[Cazador]

Thanks Steve. Maybe I'll just let my neighbor's population do its thing and pick off a few of the extras :).

[GarterGuy]

I feed my mice a lab rodent diet but I should have made it clear these tails came from frozen rodents :). I've heard shrews are difficult to raise. They are insectivores and they need to eat their weight in food every three hours or so. A friend of mine used to have pygmy mice, those babies were tineeeee, but the monkey pox scare has pretty much made them impossible to get. I may have to check on it now though. I am sure someone still has some hidden away.


I've actually seen them for sale at the local reptile shows here in PA. I didn't know they were carriers of the pox???? Only thing I know about breeding rodents is they STINK!!!!!! Tried it once and I'd much rather go out and buy a brick of frozen ones then have to deal with that again...LOL!

[sschind]

They weren't the carriers but in typical government fashion they deemed it necessary to make a large number of African rodents illegal. I don't think these were on the list but I think spiny mice were and at least one other one that I had limited experience with.

Rodents do stink, and I would rather go with the frozen ones as well but even the smallest of domestic mouse pinks are too big for my baby garters right now. Besides, the pygmy mice are actually fun to watch.

[KITKAT]

My neighbor just told me he has a bunch of shrews in his garage, so I was thinking of starting a shrew colony :cool:. I bet they'd have TINY babies ;). What do you feed your mice? Is maintenance a big deal?
Rick

HA!

First, shrews are terribly difficult to keep in captivity. Their metabolism is so high that they must be fed several times a day. Miss a feeding and they die. Secondly, shrews are bitter to the taste. Owls will feed on meadow mice (Microtus) and white-footed mice (Peromyscus) much more readily than they do on shrews. Shrews are the last choice of prey because of their bitter taste.

Finally, shrews are prone to lipidosis... a fatty disease of the liver... unless they are fed the right balance of foods, at the right frequency.

I am a former researcher on shrews, btw, when I worked at the zoology dept. of Ohio State University in the late 70's. :D I am the first (and to my knowlege the only) American to ever observe "caravanning behavior" in an American species of shrew.

So, when Shakespeare chose the name of his play, he was pretty accurate. You cannot "tame a shrew".:rolleyes:

[Stefan-A]

KITKAT, any problems with starting a Microtus colony then?;)


Well, except the fact that some local populations carry a hantavirus that causes nephropathia epidemica. And the fact that it would be illegal using wildcaught voles.

[Cazador]

Thanks folks ;). The shrew colony looks like another passing thought.

[Thamnophis]

Shrews... Long nosed mice?

[Stefan-A]

Shrews... Long nosed mice?
More like needleless miniature hedgehogs with tails. ;) Both belong to the order Insectivora, mice and voles belong to Rodentia.

[KITKAT]

KITKAT, any problems with starting a Microtus colony then?;)


Well, except the fact that some local populations carry a hantavirus that causes nephropathia epidemica. And the fact that it would be illegal using wildcaught voles.

Depends on where you live, and what the wildlife folks have on the books. Here, it is legal to keep wc mice as far as I know, and our lab at OSU did have a microtus colony, although we never tried breeding them...:p

[Stefan-A]

So nothing in their habits or requirements would actually prevent you from successfully breeding them as food for snakes? It would be interesting to give it a shot. Myodes (Clethrionomys) glareolus, which is extremely common, is a pretty impressive breeder.

Local legislation prohibits taking wild mammals and birds as pets though. You can kill voles all you want, but you can't keep them. That's a law I wouldn't want to break, you might get banned from keeping pets altogether.

[KITKAT]

Well, if it is illegal, I would not recommend it... but yes, Microtus will live quite happily on alfalfa pellets, supplemented with a bit of greens and a bit of hay. We cropped the hay to 3 inch sections with scissors, and they both ate it and nested in it.

But they are smelly little creatures, and they are much more disturbed by cage cleaning than are the usual mouse.

We have a vendor at our local herp show that sells African Pygmy mice. They are quite tiny, and look like miniature Deer Mice. She says the pinkies are the size of a large ANT.:eek:

[Stefan-A]

Ok. It was purely theoretical, anyway.

One species that seems to quickly be relpacing the ordinary house mouse as a food animal in the Finnish herp circles is the natal rat. Apparently they are about as easy to breed, but aren't as smelly.

[KITKAT]

I have toyed with the thought of raising the African Pygmy mouse as a starter food source, but decided I don't have time to mess with it.

I think Microtus babies are larger than house mouse babies...

[sschind]

I've raised pygmy mice for a little while in the past just for the heck of it and the babies are tiny. They are so jumpy that no one wanted them as pets. I have also had the Natal rats (African soft furred rats they are called here in the states, at least in my circles) I have a friend who has about 50 colonies going, maybe more by now. He has replaced many of his domestic mouse colonies with them and they do seem to produce as quickly and they are bringing a better price, plus there is the pet potential. I brought several of them into my store to see if they would sell but ended up feeding them off. I had a pastel ball python that had gone off feed and would not eat regular rats but he took the soft furred ones in a second. I just hope that once his fast is over he goes back to the regular ones.

[abcat1993]

Do any of your garters eat something other than rodents and worms like birds (although not very easy to breed)

[sschind]

Mice, worms and fish are all I've ever tried. So far my albino checkereds are taking unscented pinkies, the eastern black necks and melanistic easterns are taking fish scented pinkies and the red sides are taking zebra danios.

[abcat1993]

I was just wondering because Cazador or Thamnophis posted a pic of a bird being eaten by a garter.

[ssssnakeluvr]

actually, ssssnakeluvr posted that piuc...lol!! That's more of an odd meal for garters, but i have read about them eating roadkilled amphibians also....

[abcat1993]

Nobody feeds theirs frogs though. I hope

[Stefan-A]

I would if it weren't for the parasite/disease problem, the fact that all local amphibians are protected and their reproduction and growth rate. Not exactly able to compete with fish and mice.

I did give mine a hatchling bird once, but birds can't compete with fish and rodents either.

[CrazyHedgehog]

Nobody feeds theirs frogs though. I hope

Thought about it years ago, when our pond became full of tadpoles..and then hundreds of small frogs.... but the frogs were just way too cute...couldn't do it!
Anyway, are they not protected now?

[abcat1993]

Not many frogs are protected where I live, they're just too cute as you said and they might have parasites. But (a question for the new moderator) can you feed garters tadpoles since all they eat is algea and other pond junk?

[Cazador]

The older a tadpole or froglet it, the more likely it would be to have parasites. Some parasites bore directly through the skin, and others can be swallowed with food and water.

They can be treated for parasites just like tropical fish can, and I've toyed with the idea of raising a colony of frogs/tadpoles just for that purpose. They're supposed to be very nutritious and a good source of high energy that can be fed to baby snakes. However, the energy-rich tail of a tadpole can easily lead to obesity if it's given too often to adult snakes. You might consider tadpoles a "high energy protein bar" for snakes.

[abcat1993]

So would it make them grow faster if given occasionally?

[Stefan-A]

Any chance that you could avoid parasites alltogether by raising frogs/tadpoles from eggs? It's much easier to grab an entire egg cluster than to catch tadpoles.

Or did you have a specific frog species in mind, that would be a prolific breeder and non-toxic? African clawed frogs?


One problem with treating tropical fish for parasites, is that you're not supposed to use them as food for other animals after the treatment. At least it says so on the bottle. And since amphibians are supposed to be very sensitive to chemicals, isn't there also the risk that you might kill them with that medicine? Or is there some kind of medicine specifically for frogs/tadpoles?

[Cazador]

Hi all,
I'm looking at a bottle of metronidazole (Flagyl) right now. It would be used to kill amoeba and protozoa. It also kills gram positive and some gram negative bacteria.

The treatment protocol is different for fish and for reptiles, but the bottle says to treat fish, add one tablet for each 10 gallons (38L) of water and to retreat in 24 hours. The fish (or tadpole in this case) should remain in the solution for 5 to 10 days.

If I were going to feed the fish or tadpoles to a snake, I would change their water after their treatment and give them at least a week in fresh water to pass the medication. Otherwise, you'd be treating your snake with Flagyl, which is safe, but you wouldn't want to expose any organism to low doses of medication for an extended period.

As far as collecting eggs, I don't think it would be a foolproof method, but the chances of the eggs being parasitized would be a lot less. I suppose it depends upon how heavily parasitized the water was, where the eggs came from.

The tail of a tadpole is like the yolk sac of a bird or snake... it's provided to stimulate rapid growth and is a complete nutrient source.

[sschind]

Nobody feeds theirs frogs though. I hope

I had a southern hognose snake that would only eat frogs. I avoided the parasite problem by feeding him CBB African clawed frogs. It worked for the year I had him, but the he died. He was a wc and I never did find out why he died but I did have him treated for parasites and periodically checked and he was clean when he died. As far as the clawed frogs go, If I wanted to go through all that again I would just to get clean tads for my baby red sides but I figure they will be eating pinkies soon enough so I don't want to bother.

[sschind]

Hi all,
I'm looking at a bottle of metronidazole (Flagyl) right now. It would be used to kill amoeba and protozoa. It also kills gram positive and some gram negative bacteria.

The treatment protocol is different for fish and for reptiles, but the bottle says to treat fish, add one tablet for each 10 gallons (38L) of water and to retreat in 24 hours. The fish (or tadpole in this case) should remain in the solution for 5 to 10 days.

If I were going to feed the fish or tadpoles to a snake, I would change their water after their treatment and give them at least a week in fresh water to pass the medication. Otherwise, you'd be treating your snake with Flagyl, which is safe, but you wouldn't want to expose any organism to low doses of medication for an extended period.

As far as collecting eggs, I don't think it would be a foolproof method, but the chances of the eggs being parasitized would be a lot less. I suppose it depends upon how heavily parasitized the water was, where the eggs came from.

The tail of a tadpole is like the yolk sac of a bird or snake... it's provided to stimulate rapid growth and is a complete nutrient source.

Aquatronics (no longer in business) used to make a product called hex-a-mit which was metronidazole. It was a powder and came in a capsule. I used to treat all my WC animals by sprinkling some of the powder on the food items once a week for three weeks or four week. I never had any of the animals tested but they always seemed to respond well and seemed much healthier than those I didn't treat.

Does anyone know where I can get metronidazole in a powder form. I have a few capsules left and I don't deal with WC anymore so it could last, but I still get WC stuff for myself on occasion and I will probably get more now that I am into the garters.

[Cazador]

Hey Steve,
I'm going to jump to another thread to answer your question because I think it will be easier to retrieve this info in the future if it's under the http://www.thamnophis.com/forum/3080-post4.html thread. Hope all is well, and your Eastern blacknecks are dreaming about reproduction ;). Cheers,
Rick