Where to get mice?

[kibakiba]

Yeah, paying 70-90 a month for about 20 pinkies is a bit much... But until I can get some sort of income myself from my products, I cant really get anything better.

[ConcinusMan]

Yikes. I'd skip the mice at that price. You can keep your ordinoides and concinnus perfectly healthy without them. Maybe give it to them one rodent meal per month as a treat.

I kept a pair of concinnus for many years Chantel, they didn't eat a single rodent and they grew huge.

[Mommy2many]

Chantel, got any Petco's out there? My Petco here sells 3 pinkies for $5.00, which I think is outrageous. It still sounds better than what you are paying. The Petland I have here is the best at 6 for $5.00. It is on the otherside of town for me but worth the ride (in most cases).

[ConcinusMan]

If I recall correctly, she's in the boonies and has to travel quite a distance to go to an independent privately owned pet store. Being the only pet store around for many miles, they really stick it to you on the prices.

[Mommy2many]

Might be worth the investment then to order online and pay the shipping. Even if they have to sit in the freezer. Sounds like she has a pretty sizable group to warrant 100 pinkies. I went thru 100 pinkies in less than 2 months last year. My crew went nuts for them. So, if they sit in the freezer for 4-6 months, should be ok. Just be careful to repackage correctly.

[kibakiba]

Yeah, I live really far away from any pet stores and it costs a lot more to drive out that far since we take a bus. All of my snakes seem to prefer pinkies more than worms or fish. Snakey even goes as far as rejecting everything else but pinkies. He usually eats some worm or fish about once or twice a month with a pinky. Ember will also reject anything but pinkies unless I don't feed him for a week and a half. This month I wont have any money because I'm putting out a large order of lotion base and scents for that and some lotion bottles.

I have 7 snakes, and Mama will down 4 pinkies a week or more if I let her, so yeah, she eats the majority of the pinkies. All of them can eat them, except for Squirt and Thumbelina. That's about 10 pinkies a week, if I gave them nothing but pinkies.

[Mommy2many]

May be cost efficient to order then, online. At that rate, you would go thru 100 in about 2 1/2 months. No need to worry about freezer burn, if repackaged properly. Even if you go up to about 200, you would still see a savings.

[kibakiba]

Indeed I would. I plan to when I have the money. I'll be a lot easier for me, and the babies will be happy to be able to have their pinkies.

[Enneirda.]

Steve, ConcinnusMan, thanks for the info. We do the same kind of thing with our dogs, normal wormers are way pricy! I'll look into getting some wormer and dosing her. =)

How do I worm her?

[ConcinusMan]

You just have the one ribbon snake right? Might be worth your while to shop around vets to see how much they charge for a small reptile fecal exam. That will tell you if it's even necessary. They'll also know what species of worms your snake may have, allowing you to use the proper drug and avoid unnecessary ones.

It's a little different dosing small snakes. You can't just buy a pill and let them swallow it like you can with a dog or cat. The dosages are very minute. Too much can kill them and too little will not be effective. I had to weigh each snake accurately (The vet let me use their small animal scale) and then make the proper dose for each animal using a very expensive scale where I work that measures down to micrograms.(1000ths of a gram) The tape worm meds came in 30 milligram pills. I had to, for example, accurately shave off and measure about 0.63 milligrams (630 micrograms) for a 70 gram snake. The snakes must be weighed after a fast, very accurately as well as the dosage. A mistake (overdose) could mean death or harm for the snake.

Personally, if it were me and all I had was the one snake, if it appears healthy and feels strong, has good appetite, and there's no obvious pieces of worms coming out in her feces, I wouldn't worry myself about it. But I still would definitely freeze wild frogs first.

The only reason I dosed all the WC snakes is because I kept finding evidence of worms in their feces, and they were all sharing an enclosure or had shared an enclosure. I did fecal exams on two of them and they were positive (one had tape worms too) even though the snakes appeared healthy and were otherwise doing fine.

To all those that bought or received CB snakes from me, don't worry, I kept those separate from the moment of their birth, didn't cross-contaminate their enclosure, and fed them only clean f/t food. I was intentionally very careful about that.