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Egg Eating Snakes Alternative Reptile Food

4.6K views 6 replies 7 participants last post by  JMc83  
#1 ·
I was looking into getting an egg eating snake but like many others struggle to find a supply of eggs small enough. Wondering if they would take to other species eggs for example a mourning gecko colony? Seems like a similar process to keeping chickens for their eggs and a good way to stop gecko population from exploding as they apparently lay quite a few especially if you have a good sized colony, they lay all year round the eggs are small, fiddly but relatively easy to collect, also less wasteful than freezing and binning unwanted eggs, geckos would of course have a separate enclosure to the snake and be a lot smaller, quieter and in my opinion easier to keep than getting a bunch of finches. The egg shell would be very thin but could maybe be dusted with calcium/minerals too? Thinking that it could be a food source until the snake could graduate onto button quail eggs ect... Curious if anyone has tried/thought of this before and could share some thoughts?
 
#3 ·
As above

In terms of how to cheaply produce lots of eggs; a group of button quail would be good they lay eggs almost constantly. They're a good size for most adult egg eaters.

For babies a group of zebra finches would be good, as they are also very productive and the eggs are very very small.

In my opinion though egg eaters are best left in the wild, their diet is just too hard to replicate efficiently.
 
#4 ·
perhaps it would be most wise to ask around your local exotic bird community. if you can find someone who breeds finches and try to secure a supply of finch eggs until you can move on to more commercially available sources. if both you and the bird breeder know the score in advance then you are on to a winner. if you keep yourself a group of quail yourself once they can take those eggs then you could be sitting pretty.

i would suggest as always to do your research thoroughly. an egg eating snake is not just a problem for sourcing food but navigating feeding habits. so be sure you have got the whole process, for the duration of the animals life, nailed down before committing to one.
i have entirely dismissed egg eaters for myself because of their habits, despite them being a fascinating species.
 
#5 · (Edited)
Egg eating snakes do take gecko eggs as babies, in fact I started mine off on the eggs of Moorish geckos (Tarentola mauritanica) and Annulated geckos (T. annularis) as it was too small even for finch eggs. Several African herpetologists I have spoken to have voiced the suspicion that newly hatched egg eaters do indeed start out on gecko eggs before graduating on to bird eggs. Mine (an Egyptian egg eater, Dasypeltis bazi) took to them readily when I first got it.

However... they gecko eggs will not be suitable as prey for very long - you will eventually need to graduate them up to finch and pigeon eggs, and then quail eggs. You would not be able to keep an adult egg eater going on gecko eggs. That is assuming you get hold of a captive bred baby, which are sometimes available and historically have been regarded as very difficult to feed conventionally (most resort to tube feeding them).

Also... they cannot just be store bought eggs; they need to be fertilised or 'hatching' eggs. You can order hatching eggs off ebay for all sorts of birds but it is usually a lot cheaper to find a local breeder and source them from there; often you can get finch or canary eggs which are ideal for small egg eaters.

Another thing you need to consider is that egg eaters do not eat all the time, they can go a period of months without food and then glut on a whole nest of eggs. Overfeeding these guys is bad.

I generally wait 2-3 months between feeds for my adult Dasypeltis bazi and then offer it six eggs, or as many as it will take in one feed (usually it takes 3 or 4 and stops). The snake will usually let you know when it is hungry as it will start wandering the enclosure ceaselessly for a few days.

Another important note - which species of egg eater you find will greatly affect how you keep it and how hardy it will be. D. scabra and D. bazi are very hardy if you can keep them fed. D. gansi, D. medici and D. atra can be variable as different populations can come from different habitats (some can be quite montane!) which means it is important to know accurate locality data so you can provide them the correct care.

Here are some images of my D. bazi, I received it as a stowaway in 2015 along with a group of whip snakes as a tiny animal, it is now at full size.

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#6 ·
Also... they cannot just be store bought eggs; they need to be fertilised or 'hatching' eggs.
That’s a very important one. I mean they all are but a friend with an egg eater bought quail eggs at Tesco and the snake eventually died.

Vet said snake died of malnutrition.

Disclaimer: I know nothing about egg eating snakes but did research when I was asked to rescue one and one of those few species I had to decline once I knew the difficulty in their diet. Or rather getting said diet.