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#2093232
JackAsp
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Message To: Sacko In reference to Message Id: 2092545
Toads or mice/ rats 
The longevity records are rodent feeders, though. Find a nice, clean source of captive-bred toads, and it’ll probably be healthier than mice, but parasites love cages. What they eat in the big outdoors can be a little tougher in a cage. Frog eaters, toad eaters, lizard eaters, snake eaters, they all seem to have fewer health problems in captivity if they eat mice. Can fatty buildup from rodents happen? Yes, but not as often as parasites. And once you’re up to weaned mice they aren’t as fatty. Can hair impactions happen? Yes, but, again, it’s less common than parasites. And the only time a hair-block ever happened, which was due to her growth rate slowing down and me still feeding her the same way I had been, I easily fixed it by giving her a mouse with its tail dipped in mineral oil.
Also worth mentioning: female westerns in the wild are about two feet long. This is a three-year-old mouse-fed western. She is a fraction of an inch shorter than her 36"-long 40-gallon breeder tank:
She not only ties the (very old) record listed in the Audabon guide, but there are other mouse-fed westerns larger than she is. Bear in mind, power-feeding doesn’t tend to produce larger adults, it just makes them reach adulthood faster and die sooner. Rodents, fed in appropriate amounts, seem to result in larger actual sizes AND longer lifespans. So there’s got to be something good about them.
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#2094744
Snakebuz
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Message To: JackAsp In reference to Message Id: 2093232
Toads or mice/ rats
The reason you see many threads on feeding toads is simply because these people have eastern hognoses or southerns, and they are notorious for only eating toads or other amphibians like frogs or salamanders. I assume you have a western because it has been eating mice, I would NOT feed anything to a f/t eating snake, hognose or other, that already eats F/T mice. That is the ideal food that many wish and pray they can get their snakes to eat. If you feed your snake anything else, it could go off it’s perfect feed and hold out for more of whatever you gave it, which could be costly, hard to keep a supply of, parasitic or flat toxic. Keep with the good stuff.
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