Experience with feeding pinky mice?

[Ellentomologist]

Hello all,

So, as some of you know I've got myself a young-to-middle aged beardie named Guacamole. What you might not know is that I've also got myself a mess of other reptiles and do reptile boarding for some of my friends in the hobby. Recently I babysat some cute little corn snakes and was accidentally left with two spare pinkies in my freezer afterwards. Especially with the pandemic, neither me nor the owner are willing to travel just to give her back 50 cents worth of mice.

I'm considering feeding the pinky mice to Guac since all my other reptiles are either too small to safely eat them or too large for them to be a suitable meal. I've never fed a vertebrate to anything except my snakes before, so is there anything I should be aware of aside from the usual "pinkies are high in fat and should only be an occasional treat if fed at all" spiel?

Thanks in advance. I know I'm probably being a bit of a worrywort, but my handful of years in the hobby has definitely taught me to take the 5 minutes it takes to ask before I do something I'm unfamiliar with.

 

[KarrieRee]

I personally would never feed pinkie mice to my two --- I have heard they can cause impaction but that is what I have heard and do not know how true it is -- more experience on here would need to reply to that
Karrie

 

[Claudiusx]

Well, I have experience and an opinion on the matter, so I'll share both

Firstly, I have fed pinkies in the past. Not often at all, more so in situations like you are, a one off occasion or two. In my experience, a full grown dragon can handle a pinkie just fine. In my experience, it doesn't cause any immediate issues such as impaction. But, that's with the caveat that your dragon is already healthy, and is living in a healthy and proper environment.

Now my opinion on the matter is this:
I personally feel their is no real point to doing so. In this case, the only point is to just not waste the pinkies. But like you said, they are 50 cents, and they are dead already anyways.
There really is nothing a pinkie offers that other safer alternatives can't offer either.

Do I think it's dangerous for a full grown adult dragon to eat a pinkie? No, not necessarily. Do I think that it is something that should be encouraged? No I don't.

Personally, I'd probably just toss the pinkies. But, realistically, my experience shows that it would be very unlikely for any harm or ill to come to your full grown healthy dragon if you do decide to feed Guac one of them. Making it a regular occurrence though, is a different story (directed at others reading this, not you Ellen )

-Brandon

 

[Ellentomologist]

Alrighty! Given the situation, I think I'm just going to leave them in the freezer for now instead of offering them to Guac. They were fresh bought when I got them, which means they have months before they go bad, and it's reasonable to expect that I might get another snake that can eat them before they go bad (I'm angling to pick up a checkered garter or two). Thank you both for your two cents!