F/T Kills Thiamine Important B Vitamin

[Tulljunkie]

So, if freezing destroys Thiamine and all living creatures need it, then why aren't YOU eating live animals????

lol! A co-worker of mine was looking down his nose at F/T, going off about how snakes (reptiles in general, actually - broad discussion) don't find such in the wild.

I nodded through his whole line of reasoning, but had to ask him how the hunt-and-kill went.

To his blank-stare response, I simply pointed to the sandwhich on his desk and repeated, "Hunt-and-kill".

He didn't have a lot to say after that.

It's an interesting question, though. Our diets are quite diverse, ESPECIALLY in comparison to our snakes. Where we can make up a deficiency in one food or even category with another food or category without even thinking about it, not-so for them.

But I'm new to this, so *shrug*. My wife gave me my first baby BP just a few days ago (gorgeous, extremely curious... just wish the pet store that raised her the last few months had kept the climate more humid. She - I think it's a "she" anyway - is shedding in patches. Keeping her humidity around 80% and doing the warm-soak thing to help her out).

Looking forward to the discussion on this one. I'm used to phosphorous/calcium balancing, D3 supplementing, etc etc for lizards, so thiamine supplementation could easily become routine for me (assuming I find a reliable source of supplement, anyway).

[pythontricker]

So, if freezing destroys Thiamine and all living creatures need it, then why aren't YOU eating live animals????

ahhhh good point but do we freeze all of our foods? no. some are left not frozen and are eaten just cooked.

[pythontricker]

but how could you suppliment the vitamines and minerals w/o harming the snake.would you put a pill in the mouse or something?

[Tulljunkie]

but how could you suppliment the vitamines and minerals w/o harming the snake.would you put a pill in the mouse or something?

Dust the mouse (probably pretty far from an ideal way), soak or spray it , maybe inject it. Maybe a water-additive instead. Lots of ways.

We always did the shake-and-bake-in-a-plastic-baggie powdering thing when enriching crickets for our lizards.

[pythontricker]

oooooooooh

[Michael314]

I would like to point out that at least 90% of the proteins and vitamins in food are broken down when cooked, and more than 60% of minerals are lost in the water during boiling. This of course doesn't matter for your snake but you don't get the nutrients you think you do just because of a diverse food range.

Thiamine is only really high in cereals and grains (why whole grain is healthy) and is only really useful in the metabolism of said cereals and grains (high is sugars and starch), it has other uses in the body but considering a human uses several thousand calories a day just sleeping (22W used by brain, 10-15w by muscles) and maintaining body temp (120w) vs a snake which probably needs only a couple of hundred calories per day as it doesn't regulate its body temp and when cold can slow its metabolism. It becomes clear how it can survive on rodents considering that if it hasn't eaten anything containing thiamine in 10 hours, 90% will have left its system (see references from previous post).