Feeding T's mice

[Kurt Baird]

The reason I am asking this is because I am putting together a series of care-sheets on several species of Tarantula for a shop I help out at. Obviously one of the sections is going to be feeding, and a lot of people like to give their mature T's some pinkies/fuzzies (dependent of size) etc.

Now I have seen a lot of posts on several forums linking the over-feeding of mice with moulting problems in tarantulas. What I want to know is:

Is this true? Has any research been done or has anyone any first hand experience of such matters.

Most people agree on occasional feeding of mice, but how would you describe occasional?

Cheers.

[Rich.Harrington]

Pretty much any mammal food item will cause obesity in spiders (or any invert) if given as a staple diet. spiders are incredibly efficient when it comes to both water and food use, they are designed to take one meal and extract as much as possible incase the next meal is weeks or months away. This is simply how millions of years of evolution has made them, so for anyone to presume they will "adapt" to a new way of feeding in a year or two is naive at best.

As for evidence, just go onto youtube and hit up pretty much anything spider related "tarantula eats mouse" should do the trick. Most of these will be from american folk who feed live prey and seem to do on a regular basis, you can clearly see species with monstrous abdomens in comparison to the carapace, which is a clear sign of general health.

If your wanting technical details then it probably comes down to the fat contents of mammals, insect food items have almost no fats or such in them and so don't cause the dietry issues that mice or such will. This also means if you ever want to lose a few pounds start tucking into the roach tub.

[matthew spooner]

where you from kurt? the reason i ask is that as a club, we at the invicta arachnid club supply free care sheets on most species to pet shops etc. if you wanted i could post you some of our care sheets for the pet shop

[Kurt Baird]

where you from kurt? the reason i ask is that as a club, we at the invicta arachnid club supply free care sheets on most species to pet shops etc. if you wanted i could post you some of our care sheets for the pet shop

I'm based in Cardiff, although I think I picked up some of those sheets at the BTS show on Sunday! Thanks for the offer though!

Also, thanks for the reply, Rich. Confirmed much of my thoughts!

[Peter Lacey]

I had lots of caresheets on Sunday - Poxicator's Sling City.

I haven't yet found any papers that suggest feeding mice regularly is bad for Ts, however the general advice from experienced keepers is to keep it to a minimum. The only time I do so is after an adult moults or if I intend breeding a particular female.
Its suggested that mice have too much fat and too much calcium for a T and that frequent feeding will create problems. Where the truth lies I'm not sure but I wouldn't suggest in any of my caresheets that regular feeding of any rodent was a good thing.

[Jane Mitchell]

Is there a minimum size of T when you can start feeding them mice?

Our L Para moulted about 6 weeks ago and he's been feeding well since. On Saturday I fed him & 2 massive crickets fell out of the tube (we only normally feed him one at a time) and he wolfed them both down straight away, wrapping one up so he could go and catch the other. We've fed pinkies when looking after our friends corn snake and I don't think the size of one would be bigger than 2 crickets he scoffed the other day.