I raise quail for eggs, one of my female quail isn’t looking very good. I suspect she may be egg bound because I see her lightly straining. If I don’t see an improvement in the next hour or so I’m going to euthanize. I hate to waste life like that and was wondering if I could feed it to my snake who likes quail. The problem is I don’t know she’s egg bound and it could be some type of infection. Should the snake be fine? Or would you not risk it? Thanks for any input.
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In general, I wouldn’t recommend sick feeder animals. You don’t exactly why they are sick or if it’s contagious across species. In addition, sick animals normally don’t eat as well and the nutritional value crashes. Personally I’d avoid it to be safe.
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I figured, thank you. I was able to massage an egg out of the quail and she looks much better so I won’t have to euthanize her at all.
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Glad to hear that
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Yay I’m so glad your quail momma is doing better @sam_kimber! So this is totally my opinion only but I would feel so sorry for the quail that might be already hurting if it was fed to a snake. That would add more hurt to the poor bird!
I’m not criticizing you at all but I’m just glad the momma bird is not going to be a feeder! 
. I only have one snake (rosy boa) that insists on eating live and I hate it because the feeders (fuzzies) are so cute! lol. I am squeamish about feeding ANYTHING live!
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Yeah… they do be like that sometimes! My ball python kai refuses frozen thawed, and so we feed him live mice. He makes quick work of them though, so I don’t feel as bad. Also very happy the quail mama is ok!
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