Would you buy rabbits?

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Originally Posted by rabbitsforfood

Dalishar, how to I find the "Burms" people? I'm not familiar with the snake world whatsoever.

Also, Omnibus....is that a real snake on your avatar? Do snakes really come in that color? I've never seen a snake like that before. Very gorgeous.

Courtney

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Troll confirmed.

I don't mean to sound like a jerk to a newcomer, but this is really a troll.

Not quite understanding the jargon.

What do you mean by troll?

I don't think this is a troll. I think it's a person with a question about something she wants to get into.

a troll is someone who lurks around forums and in general is a jerk. making fun of people, pointing out the obvious... etc.

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Originally Posted by omnibus2

Troll confirmed.

I don't mean to sound like a jerk to a newcomer, but this is really a troll.

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If you were a little slower to hop up and down and call names you would have noted two things:

(1) The OP readily confessed she knows nothing about snakes.

(2) A simple Google search would have confirmed that feeding whole rabbit carcasses to dogs is not uncommon with people who believe in the raw/BARF diet approaches.

This is not the case of a troll, but of a person who is looking for information to market their goods. If you do not have the patience to answer her questions, ignore her. Calling her names and accusing her of trolling does indeed make you sound like a jerk.

omnibus2, you're really jumping the gun here. Just because someone doesn't immediately fit in with the general population of a site doesn't mean they are a troll. The OP has some legitimate questions and there's no reason why we shouldn't respond to them politely. If YOU don't like the questions, you don't have to reply at all.

To "rabbitsforfood"...as has already been mentioned, ball pythons aren't usually fed rabbits, but rabbits are a common prey animal for the larger snakes. I believe part of the confusion about the motivations for your thread is that it's been placed in the ball python portion of this site. When I'm done posting this reply, I will move it to the "General Herp" section and it should get more attention from those who keep larger snakes...both pythons and boas.

My dog's trainer feeds her dogs raw as well...and we have a friend who is getting into the rabbit-food-breeding business. Between myself and the trainer, we are "fighting" for her first bunnies....she to feed her dogs, and me to feed the burm at the zoo. :P My advantage is that I don't need her to skin or prep the rabbits in any way except to pre-kill and freeze them for me. Nell needs the bunnies skinned and gutted for her dogs.

(And to the one person who seemed a bit confused about feeding rabbit to dogs...you don't just toss them a live rabbit like you might give a snake. The raw food is skinned and prepped, whether it is rabbit or chicken or whatever)

What a well timed and topical thread ... saw this one coming a mile away. ;)

Blessings,

-adam

To offer a small amount of information to the OP.
I feed 2 rabbits every other week to my Albino Burmese Python (Albino = yellow and white in coloring). She is approx. 12 feet long and weighs in right about 100lbs. I buy live rabbits 4 at a time for $5 each.

The rabbits are large with powerful hind legs and nails so they are stunned (with CO2) right before feeding to make sure they don't injure the snake.

Hope this helps.

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Originally Posted by rabbitsforfood

Hi,

I wanted to know how popular are rabbits for snake food? What is the general pricing for rabbits used as feed?
Do you only buy live rabbits or are butchered/frozen ok? What about butchered and skinned?
What is your preference?

I've never owned a snake. But, I just got started in raising rabbits, my primary goal was to raise them to feed to my dogs, but I figured if I could sell them then it might be more economical for me. I also plan to sell rabbit skins to a local tannery, so if a snake owner wanted to buy rabbits I would prefer to butcher and skin it first, but I might have rabbits I don't want whose furs are not up to par.

I'm just trying to find out the viability of rabbits for snake food.

Thank you!
Courtney

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Hi

Rabbits are popular food items for the "giant snakes"; when I mean giants, I'm talking about Reticulated pythons (retic), Burmese pythons (burm), African Rock pythons (afrocks), Yellow/Green Anacondas (annies) and maybe a few larger boa constrictors (rtb/bci/bcc).

How much do you plan to sell your rabbits/piece to your intended snake keeping consumers? You might have to contend with those selling large rats as they are usually cheaper (i dunno about our brothers/sisters from Europe/America but here in the Philippines, a large rat costs a LOT less than a rabbit that's half it's size!).

Here in the Philippines, nobody sells snake feeders of the frozen variety so we are forced to prekill them ourselves but if I'm not mistaken, snake keepers who have access to such dealers would prefer to purchase their rabbits of the frozen variety.

In the wild, snakes eat their prey whole, so no need to skin/gut them (off topic: based on experience, SOME pythons CAN learn to eat "non whole" foods like chicken heads/drum sticks...but it's still best to feed them whole items so that they get more nutrients). Again, if you are to sell your feeder rabbits to the average snake keeper, best keep the fur/parts intact ;)

Hope this helps. :)

Hey folks, the BARF diet is real. Although I am a newbie at snakes, I am a dog trainer and do know for a fact that some people do feed their dog's this diet. (I myself do not). But it is not as far-fetched as you may think. In fact there are a few websites where people feeding dogs this diet obtain rabbits, chickens etc....So I do not think this is a troll, but someone with a legitimate question. It is actually a quite popular method of feeding canines.

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Originally Posted by rabbitsforfood

I am not a troll, I feed my dogs a raw food diet, commonly called Biologically Appropriate Raw Foods (BARF) Google it, it's getting more common by the day.

And yes, I do feed whole rabbits (butchered and skinned first) raw to my dogs, bones, entrails and all. The dogs consume everything, including the bones with absolutely no problems. They LOVE it. I feed them whole raw chickens (only cooked chicken bone is bad, raw bones are not).
On a raw diet, dogs eat less food (because of better, more dense nutrition). They poop far less often, and much smaller poop than on a kibble diet. I could go on about the benefits.

Anyways, I wanted to know about the rabbits for snake food market.

Thank you,
Courtney

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As you can see Courtney, like any forum there are all kinds of people present. I am very interested in BARF as I have two cats and my girlfriend is campaigning for a dog as soon as we can buy a house. I applaud you on doing whats best for your animals regardless of how you or others feel. You are truly a kindred spirit to many of the members of this forum. In my time hear I have read about a few ferret keepers who feed a BARF diet. I hope that omnibus2 will do a google search for "BARF raw diet" or even search ball-pythons.net as there are a couple posts on this very forum regarding the topic.

As others have said rabbits are generally fed to larger snakes than a ball python. I have only heard of one person who fed rabbit kits to their snake.

Oh and omnibus2 avatar picture is a photoshopped piebald ball python. He made the normal ball python coloring blue. Ball pythons do come in different colors. We call them morphs because well thats what they should be called. A morph is defined in zoology as a visual or behavioral difference between organisms of distinct populations in a species. Here is a good photo gallery of some of the many morphs that we talk about and some people here keep.
http://www.newenglandreptile.com/ner...ollection.html