Quote Originally Posted by Bogertophis View Post
I've supplemented the meals of rescues or breeding snakes in the past with reptile multi-vitamins. I just put a little powder into the dead rodents mouth, the snake
doesn't know the difference, & I think it may help &/or couldn't hurt. I've also heard ppl talk about using bird vitamins (Avitron, I think?), very similar to herp. vits.
Snakes that have skin issues heal very slowly...hang in there. (-the skin doesn't seem to get the priority nutrients when it comes to survival-?)
The vitamins I have were bought for our geckos, but are probably fine for reptiles in general. I forget the name, but I think it is the ZooMed brand multivitamin. I've got calcium also (with and without D3), but I wouldn't have any idea if that would help at all. General vitamin seemed like a better way to go.

That sounds way easier to add in with dead rodents... I think sprinkling a little onto a slightly wet live feeder would probably work out okay. If nothing else, the extra water would be good for her. Her prey drive with the live ones is strong enough I would be surprised if it deterred her.

I'll give it a try when she eats after this shed and update how that goes. We intended to skip this last meal after a slightly large one the prior week (sizing at the store is not always ideal...), so them both going into shed was oddly convenient timing. We usually feed on Monday, so they may eat this week or not till the next week depending when they shed for us.

I haven't tried swapping her to dead ones yet; her muscle tone is much improved, and I think I would attribute at least some of it to the extra workout subduing the rats. She definitely doesnt feel like holding a wet noodle anymore; which is a somewhat generous description of how she handled at the start.

I didn't realize that skin and scales were that slow to recover; after what I had seen posted on burns and bite injuries healing after a few sheds (or less on minor ones) I had thought it would be closer to that time-frame; 2-3 sheds or so to get close to normal. Wow. You would think scales and skin would be a priority since it would be one of their defenses against further injury in the wild, guess not though. Good to know!

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