Silence Is Not Golden Here

Tesumph · Jul 4, 2018

Zinjifrah said:
Thank you! I like lizards... but I dislike insects. Just remember - a Beardie will still need that crunchy, munchy bug protein to stay healthy. I was seriously considering getting a Uromastyx a few years back, since they're pretty much the only lizard that I knew of that could be entirely vegetarian... but after looking into them, I discovered that they do better with bugs in their diet, too, and that they're extremely sensitive to temperature changes.

Maybe, someday, a blue-tongued skink... They're amazing, and you can feed them catfood.

They really are. Just because an animal is going to be food for something doesn't mean it doesn't deserve quality of life - if anything, it deserves it more! The healthier the food my snakes eat, the healthier they are going to be, themselves. Nothing is truly healthy without a decent quality of life.

I agree wholeheartedly. I’ve owned a fat tailed gecko and currently a leopard gecko, so we’re used to bugs. Haven’t personally owned a snake but have decent experience with them.

I’ve also had rats and they’re one of my favorite pets, so I can appreciate both worlds.

Zinjifrah · Jul 4, 2018

KikisGirls said:
Neat.
So about how many rats and mice do you feed per month.

The Ball Pythons each get a small rat once a week. I usually feed on Fridays, unless I'll be gone that day. All except my Captive-hatched boy... unfortunately, he's a mouser - a BP that refuses to eat anything but mice - so he gets one or two jumbo mice a week. The male Kingsnake is considerably larger than the female (she's younger) and gets one adult mouse a week. The female gets one hopper mouse or three fuzzies, whichever I have on hand. I do pre-kill the rodents, and feed them fresh.

Tesumph said:
I agree wholeheartedly. I’ve owned a fat tailed gecko and currently a leopard gecko, so we’re used to bugs. Haven’t personally owned a snake but have decent experience with them.

I’ve also had rats and they’re one of my favorite pets, so I can appreciate both worlds.

Rats are amazingly personable. I hate it when I have to feed off juveniles - they're so trusting! Then I put them in a box and they all 'go to sleep'... It doesn't help that all of mine are dumbos, which are even more trusting than most. However... snakes need to eat.

HuskerHens18 · Jul 4, 2018

Are any of you good at telling the cause of death from photos? I found a dead hen and I suspect foul play. I posted pictures, there's no gore. It's just a dead hen with a few scratches and a little blood. Probably not for the faint of heart though, this was my baby :hit

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/kind-of-graphic-what-killed-this-hen.1257610/

Tesumph · Jul 4, 2018

Zinjifrah said:
The Ball Pythons each get a small rat once a week. I usually feed on Fridays, unless I'll be gone that day. All except my Captive-hatched boy... unfortunately, he's a mouser - a BP that refuses to eat anything but mice - so he gets one or two jumbo mice a week. The male Kingsnake is considerably larger than the female (she's younger) and gets one adult mouse a week. The female gets one hopper mouse or three fuzzies, whichever I have on hand. I do pre-kill the rodents, and feed them fresh.

Rats are amazingly personable. I hate it when I have to feed off juveniles - they're so trusting! Then I put them in a box and they all 'go to sleep'... It doesn't help that all of mine are dumbos, which are even more trusting than most. However... snakes need to eat.

Dumbo rats will always have my heart. My first girl was a little black dumbo, nothing to look at but so intelligent and sweet.

Snakes do need to eat. I often feel that people forget you can respect the animals you kill. Personally I couldn’t keep pet rats and feeders at the same time, but I would definitely feed fresh if I had a snake. We have an amazing reptile store down the road, occasionally I pick up pinkies for my Leo.

Zinjifrah · Jul 4, 2018

Tesumph said:
Dumbo rats will always have my heart. My first girl was a little black dumbo, nothing to look at but so intelligent and sweet.

Snakes do need to eat. I often feel that people forget you can respect the animals you kill. Personally I couldn’t keep pet rats and feeders at the same time, but I would definitely feed fresh if I had a snake. We have an amazing reptile store down the road, occasionally I pick up pinkies for my Leo.

I grew up in a family that hunted to put meat on the table. About the only time my father ate meat as a child was from wild game. I learned at a young age that you don't take a shot unless you're certain of a clean kill, never take a head shot - too much risk of injury without a clean kill - and you use everything you can. By the time I could walk, I knew better than to touch a gun without supervision. By the time I was five, I was target-shooting with a .50 muzzle-loader. My father was a firearm safety instructor. I don't like venison... and I don't HAVE to hunt for meat... so I don't hunt. I still own and use firearms, and have used them to put animals down when they were too injured to be saved - usually after some ... censored ... hit them with a car on the road, and kept going instead of stopping. People who go out and drop an animal just for a trophy infuriate me. Someone like that isn't there to put meat on the table, they're out there just to kill something, and anyone who pulls a trigger for no reason other than to kill shouldn't own a firearm, let alone be allowed to hunt.

I'll get off the soap box now.

itspebbl · Jul 4, 2018

You are welcome to stay up there!!

Tesumph · Jul 4, 2018

Zinjifrah said:
I grew up in a family that hunted to put meat on the table. About the only time my father ate meat as a child was from wild game. I learned at a young age that you don't take a shot unless you're certain of a clean kill, never take a head shot - too much risk of injury without a clean kill - and you use everything you can. By the time I could walk, I knew better than to touch a gun without supervision. By the time I was five, I was target-shooting with a .50 muzzle-loader. My father was a firearm safety instructor. I don't like venison... and I don't HAVE to hunt for meat... so I don't hunt. I still own and use firearms, and have used them to put animals down when they were too injured to be saved - usually after some ... censored ... hit them with a car on the road, and kept going instead of stopping. People who go out and drop an animal just for a trophy infuriate me. Someone like that isn't there to put meat on the table, they're out there just to kill something, and anyone who pulls a trigger for no reason other than to kill shouldn't own a firearm, let alone be allowed to hunt.

I'll get off the soap box now.

No please, it’s nice to hear it from someone else for a change!

I often confuse people when I go off about trophy hunting or when people whine about predators on their property (as if the animals are the invasive species). I cull my own roosters, work around guns on a ranch where killing is part of the job, have had to put down plenty of animals as you said, etc. and they think it’s no different.

It boils down to respect, imho. Knowing that every animal is alive and is doing what it was made to do, and being conscious of our place in nature in general. I’m far from a tree hugger naturalist but I do think it’s our job as animal keepers to be aware of the big picture. I dunno.

Zinjifrah · Jul 4, 2018

Tesumph said:
No please, it’s nice to hear it from someone else for a change!

I often confuse people when I go off about trophy hunting or when people whine about predators on their property (as if the animals are the invasive species). I cull my own roosters, work around guns on a ranch where killing is part of the job, have had to put down plenty of animals as you said, etc. and they think it’s no different.

It boils down to respect, imho. Knowing that every animal is alive and is doing what it was made to do, and being conscious of our place in nature in general. I’m far from a tree hugger naturalist but I do think it’s our job as animal keepers to be aware of the big picture. I dunno.

Yeah... I'm not fond of coons or possums. I've had a possum try to attack me for coming out of my house, and seen the results of them attacking cats. The same for coons - a coon will literally eat the limbs off a cat while it's still alive. I've found - and put down - the results. But if one is getting to my animals, or any other predator is... it's my responsibility to make sure they can't. Not to kill them off. I did kill the pocket gophers that were destroying my plants, but not until trying everything I could - short of ripping all the plants out! - to repel them from the area.

And I bought mouse traps to catch the deer-mouse that got into my house! But they failed. Instead it climbed into an empty dog food bag, and got stuck there. A lovely, healthy female... which, incidentally, should never be fed to pet reptiles, since wild mice carry diseases and parasites that a domestic-raised rodent does not have, unless it's been exposed to wild rodents. So I took her up the canyon and turned her loose. Figured ten miles was far enough she wouldn't be back, and a mouse relocation wouldn't do any harm to the local ecosystem - besides, there's a pair of nesting prairie falcons up there, which would be delighted with a hoppy snack.

Now, if I could just get rid of the cottontail living under my shed... though to my disgust, I recently found out some... unmentionable word... released a bunch of meat rabbits a few miles from here to 'free range', and they're breeding like crazy. I can only hope the coyotes wipe them out before they get this far.