Gut loading feeder mice?

I'm new ball pythons so I'm not sure if this is a thing, but with insects (crickets specifically) you can "gut load" them so they have more to offer for your insectivores. Would it be possible to gut load a rat/mouse so the snake could get more food in it? How would you go about doing this, just feed the mice lots of whole milk?

Would this help fight off an RI faster?
Would this help fatten a skinny snake up?


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We used to gut load but not for the purposes of fattening up. We used to keep mice, rats, asf, gerbils and gerds. All of these were fed a rather dull but cheap and nutritious farm diet intended for pigs. We would put household leftover veg into it and sometimes buy a whole sack of apples or carrots. These were sold as horse feed, having gone beyond the human consumption date.

This gave the feed animals a more varied diet and made them feed better. Veg is more interesting than pellets, right ? The main advantage though is the feed animals are having a better quality of diet that keeps them healthy and you want to be feeding your snakes healthy rodents, not ones developing diseases due to lack of nutrition. Also as snakes are carnivorous the only veg they ave getting is what is inside the digestive system of the feed animals. Whether the snake benefits from this is debateable (i say this cos someone one here is bound to debate it) but in the wild the rodents the snake hunts will not have been fed on farm pellets, they will have veg in their stomachs.

Cool concept.

A great gut load for a Kingsnake would be a snake that just ate a gut loaded rat!
Talk about power eating!:D

As far as I'm aware, 'gut-loading' as a special procedure isn't really going to be that helpful. Just have a well-fed feeder; maybe use natural food items if that's what floats your boat. Gut-loading gives the impression that you're doing something special, but for insectivores, with few exceptions, it just means feeding the crickets decent whole foods (carrots, potatoes, greens) that you'd feed if you wanted to have healthy crickets. Maybe dusting them prior to feeding depending on what's eating them. For mice I imagine the equivalent would just be to feed them well on as close to a natural diet as you can reasonably do.

I don't raise my own mice though, so there may actually be a way to feed them that's healthier for the snakes and I've just never heard of it.

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Originally Posted by Citrus

I'm new ball pythons so I'm not sure if this is a thing, but with insects (crickets specifically) you can "gut load" them so they have more to offer for your insectivores. Would it be possible to gut load a rat/mouse so the snake could get more food in it? How would you go about doing this, just feed the mice lots of whole milk?

Would this help fight off an RI faster?
Would this help fatten a skinny snake up?

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Unless you're feeding it very low quality feeders in very poor health it's probably not going to do much.

So it's not really done for the reason I meant. How about this, in regards to the RI, if you have an obese mouse would it give a snake with early RI more to fight off? Like if you up the temps so the metabolism could fight it off. Would this make a difference from a regular mouse, or would it be detrimental to feed an overweight mouse to a snake.

I don't actually have an RI problem, I've just been thinking.


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Not necessary and will not help a sick snake.

A well fed rodent is all you need for your snake, now however if you do buy your feeders (instead of breeding them) I would recommend to offer food and water for an hour or two prior to being fed off, it has nothing to do with gut loading but it is simply to ensure that you do not put a live rodents that is malnourished or not well hydrated with your snake.

I've considered a gut loading project/experiment after watching Brian Barczyk feeding a high protein ferret food slurry to young corn snakes that wouldn't eat. I thought about injecting some of the same type food into the abdominal cavity of frozen/thawed mice and rats then feeding to snakes for a protein boost.

The ferret food is designed for obligate carnivores so it should be 100% digestible by snakes.

If I had the rack space, I wanted to purchase 3-4 normal females from the same clutch. I would feed them all roughly the same sized prey on the same schedule. Two of the snakes would receive gut loaded rodents with one volume of ferret food, one would receive rodents with twice the gut load, and one would be the control with no food modifications. That would go on for 1-3 years with careful monitoring of growth rates, appetite, and behavior.

Just something I've been kicking around in my head for a while.

This is hat I was thinking to test, but rather I would test the same but with one malnourished snake to see if it fattens up as fast as another malnourished snake that's eating normal


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