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  1. #7
    BPnet Veteran Malum Argenteum's Avatar
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    Hmm. That can't explain the difference in kinking prevalence with certain morphs, at least not without appeal to some genetically distinct metabolic difference.

    Vitamin A is not remotely deficient in the diet of rodent feeding snakes; adult rats and mice exceed safe levels for cats and dogs (source), and are about 15-50x higher (source) than that recommended in poultry diets (which is the phylogenetically closest relative to snakes that we have good nutrition understanding of).

    On zinc: it looks like adult domestic rodents have about 60-65 mg/kg zinc. Highest recommended level in poultry diets is 80mg/kg (source), so feeder rodents might seem adequate -- though they're lower in zinc than wild rodents, and poultry process more food per day. Interestingly, the herps in the nutrition chart vary from 100 - 662 mg/kg, suggesting they simply run higher zinc levels (and might need more intake to maintain that). That might be worth some deeper research, maybe into the dietary uptake of zinc by rodents -- perhaps feeding rodents better would or does have benefits regarding kinking.

    Regarding Vitamin D, it would be interesting to see if keepers who provide UVB have less incidence of kinking. UK keepers would be a good group to survey.

  2. The Following 4 Users Say Thank You to Malum Argenteum For This Useful Post:

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