Review by Ryan Cox
So right now in the hobby we see a buzzword a lot. The million dollar word, enrichment. The formal definition of enrichment is the action of improving or enhancing the quality or value of something. Now we can do all kinds of things to enrich our critters’ lives as keepers. We can add sheds, make arboreal hides, and ropes to climb. We can also add variety in their diet. Which is the most benign way enhancing their captive existence. I also will admit I’m biased of this type because I’m very hip to it. But as a snake keeper it’s very easy to fall into the rut of white lab rodents on a 3 week schedule. So this is where the one, the only, and the infamous Reptilinks come in.
Reptilinks are cool. They are honestly one of the most outside the box ideas to come about. They are whole prey cased sausages. Which can come in a wide variety of blends. And I mean a WIDE variety. As of today 7/19/2020 they offer everything from chicken, rabbit, quail, iguana, 50/50 plant and rabbit meat mixtures, and many more. They also come in everything from .5 gram micro links up to 100 gram links. To top it off they are packaged in nice, vacuum sealed packs. So be mindful of telling roommates or significant others that those are not the brats they are looking for.
I took the dive and bought about $120 worth of Reptilinks to try them out. I got everything from hopper sized ones all the way up to the 50 gram links. I tried to order less but one down side of Reptilinks is that they are made to order. So you get exactly what you want. They also have a 75 dollar minimum order. So you can’t just order a pack to try it out. Which it doesn’t take long to get to 75 dollars when ordering rabbit and frog blend snake sausages. But it also takes time and isn’t a quick deal. It’s not like something like your traditional frozen rodent seller where you order on Monday and get it on Thursday. It took about 2 weeks to get my package.
I found all of the items neatly sealed and in a very, very cold box with dry ice when they finally arrived. Luckily, when they arrived it was feeding day and I thawed out a frog and rabbit 50 gram link for my 2 old year super dwarf cross retic. He isn’t a garbage disposal so he took the prey item no problem. Though I discovered a problem very quickly. If an animal gets overzealous with constricting prey it will rupture. Which causes a mess and you trying to clean ground meat off a cage. If I could get an animal to drop feed though they were A++.
So in the end, with my experience, I would buy Reptilinks again. But maybe not for my animals in particular. Between the high cost of entry and mess that it can make with an overzealous python. But if I kept animals like monitors and tegus the meat blends would be a great solution to the fatty diets we usually feed them. I’m not knocking them by any means. I think it’s a great out of the box idea we need in our hobby.
