Tube-Feeding Recipes for Snakes

Tube-Feeding Recipes for Snakes (Picky Eaters)

Ingredients:
1. Cerelac Chicken & Vegetables powder
2. Raw chicken egg yolk
3. Tiki-Tiki vitamin drops

Mix 5 mL of Cerelac powder with 15 mL of water. Use a measuring cup or any measuring instrument for exact volumes.

Lately, I just thicken Cerelac to gravy sauce consistency without measuring the volume.

Beat the egg yolk.

Mix the Cerelac preparation and the beaten egg yolk thoroughly.

Add 0.5 mL of Tiki-Tiki. Mix again.

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All ingredients are acclimatized to room temperature.

Tiki-Tiki may not be included. My corn snake rejects more formula when Tiki-Tiki is added.

Feces become lighter with the formula.

Materials:
1. 5 mL syringe. Remove the needle.
2. Suction catheter French 12 (this is the size I use) or smaller, depending on the size of the snake. A French is around 1/3 of a millimeter, so a French 12 is around 4 mm in diameter.

Connect the syringe to the catheter.

Cut the tube of the suction catheter to 3 inches (current setting for my corn snake) or 1/4 to 1/3 the length of the snake.

I give 1 mL to 1.5 mL of the preparation to my corn snake hatchling once a week.

The same recipe can be given to larger snakes such as pythons but with a much larger volume (hence requiring the use of larger syringes and catheters).

The rest of the mixed food may be frozen and used again. Thaw only the volume needed in subsequent feeding sessions.

I usually throw away the preparation and just make another one per feeding, to assure freshness.

Use a tongue depressor (wooden stick used by physicians to check for tonsillitis) or ice cream stick or wire to pry open the snake’s mouth before inserting the feeding tube/catheter.

Lubricate the feeding tube with the food preparation or use a commercially prepared lubricant such as KY Jelly to lessen the possibility of abrading the snake’s innards.

Materials can be purchased from medical supply shops in Bambang, Manila. Some malls also have medical equipment stores but with much higher mark-ups. Drug stores also sell medical supplies, also with higher mark-ups. Bambang is the place to be for cheap medical supplies. However, if only one syringe is needed and is available in a drug store near your place of residence, it is not exactly wise, financially, to go to Bambang.

Check YouTube for tube-feeding techniques. Better yet, ask your friendly neighborhood veterinarian to teach you how to tube feed if you’re wary of performing the procedure.

I’ve tube- and force-fed a considerable number of human patients and a number of my non-reptile pets, so I had no qualms tube feeding my corn snake.

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Gerber chicken or any meat-flavored broth, if available, should be used instead of the Cerelac powder, for better consistency.

Mix the entire contents of Gerber with the raw egg. Add Tiki-Tiki if desired.

Give around 1 mL to 2 mL of the preparation for corn snake hatchlings. Keep the remaining mixture frozen if desired. Thaw to room temperature before feeding again.

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Frozen rodents can also be used for tube feeding.

Place pinkies or any rodent size of choice in the blender. The blender should be used solely for squashing rodents and not for food used for human consumption.

Mix the crushed rodent with Pedialyte, beaten raw egg or any edible “thinner” to make a liquid consistency fit for tube feeding.

Keep the remaining squashed rodent preparation frozen for the next feeding session/s. Thaw to room temperature before feeding.

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Frozen chicks are also an option. Quail chicks are cheap and readily available.

Same procedure: Kill-freeze the chicks and puree using the blender.

However, f/t (frozen/thawed) rodents are a better option, in my opinion, since snakes will learn to eat on their own after some time, and we’ll be feeding them rodents for most of their lives. Rodents – whether given live, pureed or frozen/thawed – are generally cheaper and more accessible in the long run. Chicks are cheap, but adult birds are not necessarily so.

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Tube feeding is only resorted to when the snake does not eat for weeks (or months on end) or has become weak from not eating.

Try giving a thawed rodent every feeding session before tube feeding.

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Acknowledgments

1. RedRat of CornSnakes.com
2. serpwidgets in YouTube

RedRat provided the idea/s for the Gerber recipe. I just modified a bit.
Here’s the link:
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serpwidgets demonstrated snake tube feeding in YouTube.
Here’s the link:


There are other tube-feeding videos available in the Net, but I find serpwidgets’s presentation to be the simplest.

nice info! +rep for you!