An interview with Kyle Vargas
HM: So you were on The Herpetoculture Podcast not that long ago and talked about how you feed your rodents a varied diet? What is it that you give them, how much and how often?
KV: They get about 1/3 cup of 40 different seeds, grains and nuts every morning. Every other evening, they get dried crickets, grasshoppers and live mealworms. Every 5 days they get fresh veggies in the evening also. Fresh grass and hay is offered at all times as well as salt blocks.
HM: And you just buy the parts and put it all together?
KV: Yes sir, that’s an every day mix of grains and seeds.
HM: Do you offer a commercial rodent diet?
KV: They get absolutely no commercial rodent diet whatsoever.
HM: Do you offer some food options that give the feeders more fat over protein and vice versa? Personally I use a higher protein to fat ratio for mine.
KV: I don’t really run numbers on protein and fat intake because everything I offer is natural and I offer enough variety that I am not concerned with them lacking in either of those departments.
HM: Have you noticed any major differences in terms of production, longevity, and benefit to the animals you’re feeding with them?
KV: I’ve only been raising mice this way for 2 years now but I have noticed a drastic growth increase in my babies.
HM: Would you recommend people raising their own feeders even if it’s on a small scale?
KV: I absolutely recommend that everybody raise their own if they have the ability. There is nothing that compares to being able to have so much input into what your snakes are eating.
HM: Do you “gut load” your feeders ahead of feeding them off be it live or f/t?
KV: It’s not really possible to “gut load” the mice unless they are able to eat on their own. When I feed hoppers to snakes, I do feed them veggies and insects prior.
HM: Are there some veggies they seem to prefer over others?
KV: I can’t say that I’ve noticed. I give carrots, zucchini, romaine lettuce and squash mostly.
HM: What was the motivation for taking care of your feeders the way you do?
It really all started whenever I started observing snakes in the wild and their body condition and my snakes’ body condition in captivity. There was a clear difference. Snakes in the wild are a little bit thinner. They’re typically a little but more muscular than snakes in captivity and I wanted to emulate that as best as I could. So I started to dissect every single thing I did from the ground up. I figured it has to start with what the snakes are eating and in turn with what the snakes prey items are eating.
In the wild there are no rodents that eat any type of meal which makes up about anywhere from 14 to 25% of the manufactured feed that we feed our rodents and they’re not doing that in the wild and that’s basically a filler it’s the same thing that we see in our food soy is just essentially a filler. I don’t want to feed my snakes fillers. I want to feed them good nutrients and vitamins and minerals.
So yeah, I just basically started there and I noticed immediate and drastic changes in growth, in feeding response, you name it and there’s something to be said about having so much involvement with with your snakes you know if I want if I want my mice to be eating carrots and squash and grasshoppers before I feed I can offer it. All-in-all I guess I can say that I didn’t want to deprive my snakes of anything that they were getting in the wild. Any way possible that I could emulate what was happening in the wild I try to make that happen in my feeding regiment and the way that I keep my snakes in general.
