Tricking the poison out of worms

[Zephyr]

I had an interesting experience today.
I went to feed my green male eastern, out of brumation for a week or two, one of my panfish worms. He REALLY loved the flicking movement it made and he had it in his mouth in no time. However, after a moment of swallowing, he stopped, paused, then regurged. On the outside of the worm I saw lumps of yellow fluid mixed with worm mucus. So I got an idea...

For worms, including red wigglers, and pan fish worms, like Wayne and I have been using, we can easily bypass the toxicity by tricking the worm to release its toxin before being swallowed. Of course some of my snakes have no problem downing the worm with the poison, like one of my baby easterns, however it would be great if we could convert the most readily available worm, red wigglers, into usable garter food.

The method I just tested involved irritating the front of the worm until the yellow liquid appears, then simply rinsing it off. They don't have an infinite supply of the stuff on hand, and the garter will have the body digested by the time it would be able to make more.

I'll be running some personal tests on this, especially with red wigglers proposing so much potential.

[infernalis]

interesting Kyle, just hope it does not cause any problems.

I have been cutting up night crawlers anymore, works fine.

[Stefan-A]

Yeah, let's just hope that those small amounts that are left in the worm don't accumulate until it finally kills the snake. Or that exposure to it causes other problems.

[Hornets23]

It almost doesnt seem worth it when there so many other options readily available.

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

Kyle, i really don't think this is worth the risk when you can easily use other safe worm pieces. I know you are one for coming up with new ways and tricks to do things, but this is just plain risky. And it's going to give newcomers here the wrong ideas that these worms are safe if they are poked enough. No, they don't have infinite toxin, but how do you know ALL of it has been secreted? And how do you know that by the time the worm is digested it has not produced more of it? Do you have information on hand stating how long it takes for the worms to build up more toxins? And how much toxin is harmful? My biggest concern is that there will still be trace amounts of the toxins in the worms regardless of how fast they can make more. Not 100% is going to come out. If you had worms soaked in bleach, and then you had worms that only had the very tip of their tails dipped in a very weak bleach solution, you wouldn't feed those worms to your snakes, either way, right?

[brain]

interesting Kyle, just hope it does not cause any problems.

I have been cutting up night crawlers anymore, works fine.

Why cut them up? Is this a size problem to the snake?

I find there are other food sources and to trick the worm??

But if we don’t experiment then we learn nothing. It’s just the down side one must live with.

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

Nightcrawlers are gigantic, and for baby snakes you have to cut them up. If you use small garden earthworms, you don't have to cut them up. It works either way though, provided you don't make them a staple diet, cut up worms is fine. I run them under the hot water faucet and shake them, this cleans the dirt off them, kills them (sort of) and stretches them out really thin all in one, then even smaller snakes can handle the pieces with ease.

[reptile3]

That is exactly what I do Shannon, I have to cut my nightcrawlers. I always run them under warm water. Since my 3 snakes are still little.

a few weeks ago, I had the worm pieces alittle bigger, & one of snakes never swallowed it, & it came back up. So back to smaller pieces.

Nightcrawlers are gigantic, and for baby snakes you have to cut them up. If you use small garden earthworms, you don't have to cut them up. It works either way though, provided you don't make them a staple diet, cut up worms is fine. I run them under the hot water faucet and shake them, this cleans the dirt off them, kills them (sort of) and stretches them out really thin all in one, then even smaller snakes can handle the pieces with ease.

[infernalis]

It is a pain, but I have even cut night crawlers lengthwise to get smaller pieces for the baby Dekayi.

The plans are in motion for farming safe foods in the basement.

[Aundrea]

I dig the worms up from the garden to feed my Dekays but now since there is snow on the ground I have been using small nightcrawlers for them. I have been trying to find a site that sells worms and I have found a few soooo I shall be ordering some soon