Oh wow, seriously? I know chickens are used for feeding retics, but I thought snakes were hesitant to eat cuts of meat… That actually seems like it would make keeping large constrictors easier than keeping smaller snakes, if you could just go to the deli to get them food. What about frozen whole poultry, like you’d buy at any supermarket? Does it matter that they’re plucked? And headless? XD
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I’ve tried most of the tricks with picky ones, including bits of chicken. There was one baby corn who wouldn’t feed for the longest time, but finally took some chicken thigh meat. I was getting separate and just sliced a bit for the snake while making supper for us. Obviously only tiny bits, but it worked to get them feeding. And it was relatively easy to eventually convert them to mice by wrapping a bit of chicken on the mouse for a couple of feedings. It really is amazing what works sometimes. A wild baby corn would certainly not be eating chicken. The opposite would be more likely.
Interesting thought. don’t have any data, but I would think that they can, in a sense, enjoy the taste of their food. Smell and taste are inextricably linked, and snakes have scent receptors in the roofs of their mouths. Seems to me they’d be able to enjoy their meals.
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Yeah, it’s not something that I can find much research on… 
As humans, we don’t always think of “smell” as the most enjoyable thing (especially not as it relates to thawing dead rodents, haha), but it’s hard to imagine how it would feel to smell food, but not have taste buds… I always guessed that a snake used scent primarily to locate and identify food (beyond using it for perceiving the world in general), but figured that taste would not be much of a factor… since they eat their food whole. Would mouse fur or bird feathers have strong enough smell or taste to be “enjoyable”? Another interesting thing being that they readily eat frogs, which many carnivores reject due to some frogs’ natural defense of… tasting bad. Interesting idea…
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Oh yeah! I’m also pretty sure Reptilinks is using a culinary source for frog legs. Some meats are difficult to get whole-carcass and bullfrog must be one of them.
That said, pieces of frog meat might be worth a try with a picky snake, or I’ve seen people give theirs a leg as a variety add in, as “part of a balanced diet” as commercials used to say, lol. I know garters take pieces of prey items of a wide variety including chicken hearts, frog leg, tilapia, earthworms, etc, and there again the key is variety, I am told.
From what I have been able to find about African House Snakes, in the wild they’re opportunist feeders on anything small and wiggly in the undergrowth and leaf litter they prefer to hide in. So probably worms, grubs, sluggy things, whatever fits in their mouth.
But, and I conjecture wildly here: from his habits I make the hypothesis that the Filet Mignon/Uber Power Bar of that diet is warm nutrient packed juicy baby rodents,
and mine has figured out he can refuse EVERYTHING that isn’t baby mice and eventually get them.
He also has a strong instinct for refusing any non-live prey. We’re working on it.
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Actually, since you mentioned tilapia… I’ve never really heard much about feeding fish to snakes. There are definitely snakes that would be eating fish in nature, and I imagine that different species of fish could cover a wide range of fat-to-protein ratios, or other nutritional balances. Is it because of potential for mercury? What about freshwater fish?
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Just like feeding mouse or rat tails to really tiny species. I also know people that will section rodents or chicks to have appropriate-sized prey items
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Try Asian or international food markets, their butcher sections tend to have a lot of organ meats available
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I know a lot of Nerodia and Thamnophis keepers feed tilapia. And most every rhino rat breeder I know has started their babies on rosy reds or guppies. I know a few people that have used trout and catfish and salmon (fresh caught and/or cut fillets). Mercury is not so much a concern but you do need to avoid species like goldfish and the like that contain high levels of thiaminase in them which leads to vitamin B depletion
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My Thamnophis & Hognoses have gotten salmon before and loved it. I do worry about the fat content, though.
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Thanks @t_h_wyman I will remember the chicken hearts tip! Hopefully I don’t have to go that route anymore! Lol! 
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Honestly, I’d be willing to go the extra mile to track down organ meats if it meant less rodents in the freezer. XD I’m not opposed to feeding rodents, but dealing with them is not my favorite part of snake husbandry… The thought of being able to buy snake food at a grocery store (even if it’s a specialty grocer) definitely appeals… Though of course, the snake’s best interest comes first.
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I could be wrong but don’t reptiles, snakes in particular, need the benefits of whole prey items such as the bones? Bones provide calcium that snakes need for health. Grocery market meats would not necessarily provide that. Or am I way off base here?
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I meant things more like whole frozen poultry, in terms of a dietary staple—in pieces, presumably, unless we’re talking about a jumbo-sized snake like a mainland retic (not something I could handle, but I wonder how they would do on whole, f/t raw chickens/turkeys/ducks? As in, plucked but whole, with organs present but head removed?). I imagine organs or cuts of meat would be more of a temporary fix for a fussy eater, or a very small baby. I wouldn’t trust just meat (organ OR muscle) to be a complete nutritional source, unless there are snakes that are hyper-specialized in eating soft invertebrates?
I’m especially curious because of how often I hear people mention the difficulty of feeding the largest snakes… They talk about stillborn pigs and other livestock, but I always wonder why a frozen turkey or chicken wouldn’t be a simpler solution…
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I’ve seen keepers of large snakes give them the odd whole chicken, but a plucked bird is sometimes easier to obtain from a butcher. You can get those with organs in, though. Richard Bilbo once mentioned giving his snakes turkey necks as part of their varied diet.
So it’s not out of the realm of supposing that people might feed whole large birds. A lot of people feed quails to their mid size snakes. It’s just that I’d guess maybe you might get more meat per volume of shape with say, a piglet? It’s more of a tube than a chicken is. I wonder!
Retic and Burm keepers, chime in? Do you ever feed a whole bird?
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When it comes to REALLY big snakes (18+ feet), I always wonder about what they would be in eating in their natural habitat… It would probably be virtually impossible to perfectly imitate in captivity, but I wonder if one prey item is more balanced than another… Like, how calorie-dense should one meal be? Or protein-to-fat ratio?
(I doubt I’ll ever have the pleasure of keeping a giant myself (there are not a lot of snake enthusiasts in my real-world life, and of course I wouldn’t be able to handle an animal like that alone), but they still fascinate me… I like to appreciate them in others’ collections, and in zoos and exhibits. It’s weird… I was terrified of snakes as a very little kid… except for the giant ones. XD I thought those were cute. I was a… unique child. )
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For me it just means I had to take over a whole extra shelf in the freezer devoted to other food items LOL
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You are not wrong. That is why I go with diversity - hearts one week, necks the following week, a quail after that, a Link…
But you can also dust items with calcium powder
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In the wild, really large animals are either taking one or two massive meals that can sustain them for most of the year or they are taking a LOT of much smaller items
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I was wondering about the calcium dusting… I’ve only ever heard of doing it for insect feeders or veggies. Do snakes utilize the keratin in fur/feathers/claws? Would that be a deficiency issue if you fed something like commercially available (and thus, plucked) fowl?
Isn’t it stressful for them to have to eat multiple smaller prey items in rapid succession? Do they digest them fully before hunting again? I feel like I remember seeing someone advised not to feed their bp multiple mice (the bp was refusing rats).
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It’s one of those things that can possibly lead to a regurge, but not always. The concern is if the multiple prey items overlap a certain way or it taking longer to digest than a single meal and handling can cause the regurge.
I have no doubt that as an opportunistic feeder, a wild snake would consider more than one prey item when available…but we want to try to avoid stress and possible health issues in our husbandry, so many will tell you not to risk it.
Sometimes if you have a stubborn mouser there’s not really a way around it. Or in the case of mine as she was in a growth spurt at the time, she was being fed a mouse every 4 days. She was a skinny girl at the time and refused any ‘normal’ sized meals for her size. That kind of feeding takes a lot of monitoring ands such though, not just for regurge but for bloating or signs of digestion discomfort as well.
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Given the amount of hair/feathers I have seen in feces (and also the documentation of species that are known to hack up hairballs), I am inclined to say that plays a minimal input to the dietary needs
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It depends on the way the animal eats. Multiple very small (in relation to the size of the snake itself) prey items do not result in the same massive metabolic/physiologic changes that one giant meal does, so the stress factor is not that large.
There is a thread here by Mike Wilbanks titled something like “Grow them bigger faster” If you can get past the drama and arguing, there is some good information in there
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Question: aren’t fur, feathers, and hair thought to be helpful for snakes in terms of binding waste and actually getting it out of the body? Kind of like their equivalent of fiber for us? Or are these things just passed through because there’s nothing else the animal can do with them and they’re truly just waste?
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While they certainly can and do act as “binder” that is more a (generally beneficial) secondary effect to them not being digested. And there are some species that do not even like that secondary benefit (again, the species that regularly cough up hairballs)
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I’m really wondering what a snake coughing up a hairball looks like… 
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