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Re: Will my python ever recover?
 Originally Posted by paulh
All of them. It would not hurt to use some vitamin A, C, D, E, ... , too.
Yes, it absolutely would be expected to hurt. Feeder rodents are widely accepted to have sufficient levels of Vitamin D. "Metabolic bone disease is [...] uncommon to rare in snakes as they usually eat whole food items and absorb adequate dietary levels of calcium and vitamin D3" (source). "...rodents are a completely balanced diet" (Maders' Reptile Medicine, p. 216). More Vitamin D than is sufficient is not better.
Since nearly all supplement dusts use calcium carbonate as an active ingredient or carrier, and since rodents have a perfect ratio of calcium to phosphorus, increasing the level of calcium in the diet would be counterproductive.
By far most importantly, domestic feeder rodents are known to have borderline toxic to toxic levels of Vitamin A (source: Mader's Reptile Medicine, p 206 and feeder analysis chart pp 218-219). Accepted overdose rates of Vitamin A are 16,000 - 24,000 IU/kg of food; small to large rats contain 30,00 - 60,000 IU/kg. Shotgunning Vitamin A in rodent feeding herps is absolutely contraindicated.
Misdosing Vitamin A has a bad history in herpkeeping, BTW. Many turtle species were overdosed on Vitamin A when such practices were in fashion in the 1980s; this lead to a "preformed Vitamin A is toxic" scare that was addressed by using only pre-Vitamin A (carotenoids) in supplements. These supplements still exist, and currently are misused by hobby keepers for species that do not metabolize carotenoids to Vitamin A (with regular fatalities in amphibians, which seem unusually susceptible to hypovitaminosis A).
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