an interesting observation...

Those of you that have been feeding ASF's for a while now (like me :) ) know that ASF's are WAY less aggressive towards the snakes then normal mice or rats.... Once struck, they pretty much accept their fate and don't fight back.

Just out of curiosity tonight I threw a shed skin from one of my big breeder BP's in the grow out tub and all hell broke loose!

Every single rat (from young to old) when absolutely nuts, and they faught over the skin till it was totally eaten about 5 minutes later. Trust me, my rats are NOT underfed. LOL.

I guess it is some kind of natural thing. I assume it must be good for them so now I know what to do with the skins.... considering their fate, I guess I owe them at least so much...

But now they might have a taste for your Ball Pythons, lol.

Well the only way to actually tell is to throw a human in a huge tub full of ASF's and see what happens...

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Originally Posted by Mike Cavanaugh

Those of you that have been feeding ASF's for a while now (like me :) ) know that ASF's are WAY less aggressive towards the snakes then normal mice or rats.... Once struck, they pretty much accept their fate and don't fight back.

Just out of curiosity tonight I threw a shed skin from one of my big breeder BP's in the grow out tub and all hell broke loose!

Every single rat (from young to old) when absolutely nuts, and they faught over the skin till it was totally eaten about 5 minutes later. Trust me, my rats are NOT underfed. LOL.

I guess it is some kind of natural thing. I assume it must be good for them so now I know what to do with the skins.... considering their fate, I guess I owe them at least so much...

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Thats pretty interesting, gonna try that some time.

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Originally Posted by 05chev

But now they might have a taste for your Ball Pythons, lol.

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:) yeah, I thought of that.... but I'm not worried about it. My snakes can handle their business... :snake:

Mabey because they are in a group that is why they ate the skin. But when I put one in for feeding it just sits in the corner waiting.

Huh. I wonder if mice would do the same. I should try that when my snake next sheds.

Try throwing one of your snakes in the breeding group and see what happens. lol

OK....so Ive tried it. With 4 different sheds that conveniently came off the day after I read this thread.

ASF's....go NUTS over shed skin. I thought they went nuts for popcorn, no way.

Cool observation Mike. Im gonna give them shed skins from now on. I figure if ASFs are their natural prey, and they occupy rodent burrows so it makes sense that ASFs would naturally encounter and snack on their sheds. I wonder what the nutritional value in it would be for them. Be funny if sheds are the secret to ASFs growing faster.

Woah. I'm gonna try that sometime. Actually, I have a bag of old sheds, I might try it with one of those.