Vet-Recommended "Shake N'Bake-like" Reptile Vitamins for BP?

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Originally Posted by Mendel's Balls

does anyone do this?

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No, no one.

-adam

It seems odd that you need vitamins, when there has been no study (as far as I know) of the nutritional requirements of ball pythons. How can you say you need more of certain vitamins, if you don't know what are the basic necessary baselines?

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Originally Posted by tigerlily

It seems odd that you need vitamins, when there has been no study (as far as I know) of the nutritional requirements of ball pythons. How can you say you need more of certain vitamins, if you don't know what are the basic necessary baselines?

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:colbert2:

As long as the whole prey item you offer is of a good quality then the snake will get all it needs from that source. Nature intended snakes to get what they need from that prey item with no need for vitamin suppliments that I've ever heard of. We had an excellent, experienced herp vet in northern Michigan and I feel confident that if vitamins were required for snakes, I'd have heard about it from Dr. Pam (she was a stickler for people keeping herps very responsibly or not at all LOL).

This is a big problem out there. General hobbiest like us have more knowledge about captive care for a specific reptile than a vet. When being taught in school, do you really think that they would cover all different types of reptiles, how to house, care, and treat them? LOL....they would be in school forever ;) However, they do get the 'general' reptile care and treatment schooling......what is that saying?...."a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" ;) My only problem with some vets is that since they have been schooled in the care of animals.....they automatically think they are right in all situations.....even though they have no practical experience caring for the reptiles...so all they are doing is regurging what they read in a book or what their professor told them in school....

The key if finding a general vet that is open to discussion and learning......or finding a great reptile vet.....and there are still GREAT reptile vets out there too :)

I don't think you need to use it; I guess he is talking about that Reptical stuff.. I used it in the past to shake the crickets in, that I fed to various frogs; it basically acted as a preventative measure for metabolic bone disease; this can cause a frog to become deformed or even die due to calcium deficiency.
Seeing that wild BPs eat whole rodents, as do our domestics, I think it is unnecessary to powder their food; bones of the rats should be enough for that calcium need. And since your girl is feeding/doing so well, Mendel, I would not change a thing; good job!