Opinions on vitamins

This is more of a curiosity than an actual idea for my snake -

So for some turtles and lizards we have always added a calcium w/ D3 supplement to their food / insects. For birds that are getting frozen/thawed fish they get either a vitamin B or multi-vitamin supplement since thawing them in warm water depletes the vitamin content. Since snakes are getting whole prey, I wouldn't think it is necessary...

but is there any research out there that would suggest that feeding snakes f/t prey leaves them lacking in some kind of vitamin? Does anyone use some kind of reptile vitamin and does it seem to have any positive effect?

They are a waste of money, the prey item you feed to your snakes contains everything your snake needs.

I thought so, nothing in any research I did ever mentioned ball pythons needing anything extra. But, I'm not a nutritionist and was not 100% sure that freezing rodents didn't degrade some nutrient, so I got curious. It all started when I was browsing through the pet store and heard one of the employees trying to sell repti-cal with beta-carotene to a person that was buying a corn snake and I wanted to see what others' opinions were on supplementing snakes...the logic from the sales person was "well, people take vitamins to supplement their diets, and animals aren't that different". Luckily the woman wasn't buying his pitch :)

In the wild turtles and lizards spent a lot of time basking in the sun. This is how they synthesize vitamin D.

If humans spend 20-30 minutes a day in the sun, Vitamin D supplements are not considered necessary unless you have a condition indicating otherwise. The more skin exposed, the less time needed for exposure.

Our snakes are consuming Bone, very high in Vitamin D, one of the necessary building blocks for bone.

I suspect (I don't know) that the white chalky part of the urates eliminated is mostly "bone waste". Maybe someone else will verify or shoot this theory down.

In humans, our bone is constantly being broken down and rebuilt. We drink enough water to filter this out unseen in our urine.

Sorry, more than most wanted to know, but maybe there are a few physiology nerds out there.



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The salesperson has a point. I just don't agree with using his product for rodent-eating snakes. There is plenty of evidence of vitamin deficiencies in captive snakes eating whole animals. For what it's worth, I use a good liquid multivitamin for birds for corn snakes.

Mitchell, Mark A. 2004. Snake care and husbandry. Veterinary Clinics of North America: Exotic Animal Practice 7(2): 421–446. http://www.vetexotic.theclinics.com/...013-1/abstract

I have the full paper in pdf format.