The African House Snake - Feeding
I remember when I first started to become interested in House Snakes in the late 1970s and early 1980s, they would occasionally be listed on the animal lists of the major herp importers. I remember one particular list selling captive born babies (then a very uncommon item!) and describing them as miniature pythons. At the time, I wondered why they were described that way. As soon as I saw one eat, I understood!
Here are some of the basic rules for feeding house snakes:
1. House Snakes will eat anything!
Sometimes it seems that House Snakes will eat almost anything! In the wild they are known to have eaten rodents, lizards, shrews, birds, bird eggs, frogs, other snakes and even insects. There is even a record of a house snake eating a venomous Burrowing Viper (Stiletto Snake - Atractaspis bibronii). In captivity, I have found them no less flexible. Just for fun, one summer I offered my largest female a large variety of pre-frozen prey items to see what she would take. She accepted the following:
- Domesticated mice (Mus sp.)
- Domesticated Rats (Rattus sp.)
- Grasshopper Mice (Onychomys sp.)
- Pocket Mice (Chaetodipus and Perognathus sp.)
- Kangaroo Rats (Dipodomys sp.)
- Cotton Rats (Sigmodon sp.)
- Wood Rats (Neotoma sp.)
- Bullfrogs (Rana catesbiana)
- Spiny Lizards (Sceloporus poinsetti)
- Free-tailed Bats (Tadarida brasiliensis)
- Pallid Bats (Antrozous pallidus)
- House Sparrows (Passer domesticus)
To prove that there are limits, she did refuse a Great Plains Toad (Bufo cognatus)!
This dietary flexibility does not mean that you have to provide such a varied menu. These snakes will readily and consistently take prekilled domesticated mice. Some adult females may get large enough to take small rats, but I recommend feeding them several mice rather than one larger rat. These are slender snakes and even a juvenile rat really stretches their ingestion limits. House snakes will gorge themselves if you allow it. This is not necessarily a good idea. A reasonable meal should make a lump in a the snake without causing its skin to be stretched between the scales at midbody.
2. House Snakes should eat alone!
I have kept many species of snakes over the years, and without a doubt, House Snakes are the most aggressive feeding snakes I have ever seen. The rate at which they strike out and coil around prospective prey items is remarkable! This aggressive feeding response has its good and bad sides. Yes, it is easy to get newly acquired house snakes to eat, but they are so overzealous in their eating, that the will frequently attack each other instead of the prey!
This is even true of "well adjusted" captive raised adults. As soon as one of the snakes finishes swallowing its food, it will begin swallowing the other snakes food, even if the other snake is in the process of swallowing it! If you don't intervene, you end up with one very fat snake instead of two! I have even seen house snakes trying to swallow parts of the other snake that smelled like a mouse, from where it had constricted a mouse!
So even if you keep them together at other times, separate house snakes for feeding.
Baby house snakes can present a different problem. I have seen and heard of several incidences of baby house snakes that were not provided adequate food eating their siblings. See the reproduction page for more tips on raising baby house snakes.
3. House Snakes are thin snakes!
Another of their python-like attributes is their willingness to try to ingest enormous meals. House Snakes are meant to be lithe, slender snakes. Trying to "correct" this by overfeeding usually results in premature death of the snake.
See the Reproduction Page for more information on the effects of overfeeding house snakes.
I recommend feeding adult house snakes once every week to ten days. At each feeding, I give them one or two food items that are slightly larger in diameter than their body. For breeding females, I will sometimes double this food load to help them get their body mass back up to normal between clutches.
Males, on the other hand, don't need much food.
Juvenile house snakes should be fed weekly one or two pinkie mice. Again, you just want to make a small lump in the snake. Be careful what you offer juveniles, they will gorge themselves if allowed and this can have negative consequences. See the Reproduction Page for more info on raising juveniles.
© Chris Harrison
| 
