Quote Originally Posted by rabbitsforfood View Post
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
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.