Hey hey,
I'm a big old meat eater.....but i have a vegan friend who was with me when i got my baby boa.....she loves snakes but had the same issues with feeding....she couldnt deal with live or even frozen mice....fortunetly i live in berkeley and our local vivarium carries vegan sausages for snakes...you just heat them up and you ready to go....thats right your snake can be a vegan!
crazy huh

i was a vegan when i got my snakes (my reason was that i thought i could not kill an animal myself, and didn't want to pay someone to do it for me and then package it so it didn't look like an animal). ironically, the snakes were actually the reason i eventually started eating meat again, since i had to kill the mice they were eating back when they were babies. i realized i COULD do it afterall, and felt like i could start eating meat again, be it meat that is killed as humanely as possible.

my rationale for being okay with caring for a carnivore while still being vegan was that the snake doesn't have a choice like humans do. of course, i didn't know about the vegan sausages at the vivarium back then! i assume they don't sell them in rabbit size, though, and that's what i'm feeding my boa now.

you're right--the politics of consumption, for both pet and caretaker, can be pretty complex and hilarious!

amberina

I am a vegetarian myself. I got my first snake when I was 6 though, and thus didn't become veg until a lot later. I always used to feed live mice and sometimes it would bother me a little bit, but now I always feed frozen mice. However I've had all sorts of rodents as pets before and I really don't know if I will be able to feed him rats and especially not rabbits when he gets bigger....but I'm just going to leave it up to my boyfriend :) Other than that I really don't have problems with it, mostly because as others have said snakes really don't have a choice in the matter. Well good luck and I hope everything works out for you :)

I'm largely a vegetarian; I've starting eating some seafood and occasional poultry. Although, I have been a vegan, and I've been a vegetarian most of my young adult and adult life.

I feed my snake thawed mice. I felt strongly that I could not feel live prey. I felt even more strongly that I couldn't kill or even stun live prey. This led to me not getting a snake until I learned about the frozen alternative. It's still a little hard for me, but I understand that my snake needs it to live.

I've gotten crap from a couple people about being "vegetarian" and having a snake. I think that it's very stupid. I have cats, and have had them the majority of my life, and they are carnivorous. Just because their food comes in a bad and isn't recognizable as meat doesn't mean that it is any different than a mouse.

I think that having a snake has been good for me. The cycle of life isn't always kind, and some creatures need to eat others to survive. It's also been great to not just overcome a fear (of snakes), but to be able to embrace them.

While I think this topic is very interesting ... I think it is important to take note of an important fact: Boas are carnivorous creatures.

While our bodies are omnivorous and we have evolved to take nourishment from both plants and animals, these creatures have not. I am a bit concerned about the long term effect a vegan diet would have on a carnivorous snake. Remember, we are in charge of these magnificent animals and it is our responsibility to make sure they are healthy. They consume only living prey in the wild. This is what their system is designed for. When we take on the responsibility of owning a snake, we take on this issue. It is a fact that has to be dealt with. I would say if it bothers you, then maybe a snake is not for you, and there is nothing wrong with that.

How can we put human ideals onto an animal that goes against its very nature because meat eating bothers ~us~? It just seems rather cruel to me. Especially since the snake vegetarian diet has not had long term testing.

Like it or not, meat has properties that just cannot be obtained through a vegan diet and when an animal's entire eating system was developed solely for meat, you have to wonder what we are doing to them internally that we may not see for years to come, if they live long at all.

I am all for human beings having the choice to be vegan, and I am not slighting that lifestyle. But these are snakes, not human beings. Everyone is so supportive here, and I think that's great, but politeness should still give way to reason and fact. I would just put out there to think of these facts. Ultimately your choice is your own, and I respect that. Just think about it.

I am a vegetarian! And I own 5 snakes :-)