What happened to my Scarlet Bird Eater?????

[Brian goosen]

I have a Scarlet Bird Eater or should I say had one, she was about 15cm in size had no problem with eating and I know the heat and humidity was fine, I fed her a pinky on Monday evening, she ate it as she usually does and Tuesday I found her dead? I have no idea how or why this happened. Any advice or opinions are more than welcome please.

[wayne balcombe]

how often did you feed it pinky mice?

[Brian goosen]

This was her first pinky, she usually gets crickets, twice a week about 4 to 5 per eating, hence me swopping over to pinkies, my Red Rump is full grown but smaller and she has been eating pinkies for months already, I don’t understand?
Thanks for the help.

[wayne balcombe]

while pinkies may appear to be an acceptable larger food source it should not be fed to spiders on a regular basis, there is some controversy about the affects but in my opinion it boils down to taking away the natural diet of a Theraphosid.

Theraphosids in the wild are oppertunistic feeders and have a varied diet mostly of insects but occasionaly small reptiles, amphibians and mamals.

pinky mice will contain a higher quantity of fat and other components that would not otherwise appear in a natural diet if fed exclusively or too often so may bloat the spider but not provide it with the proper level of neutrition. some studies have indicated that feeding of pinky mice regularly (more than twice a year) may reduce the life span of a spider.

If this was the first feeding of a pinky mouse to your spider i would have said it was unrelated to the death but givin the short space of time between feeding and the spider passing i should say though unlikely it is possible that feeding the pinky may have caused some form of adverse effect and subsequently resulted in the death of the spider.

if as you say the temperature and humidity levels where fine for that specific species, there was a full water dish available, the spider had not damaged its self in any way and did not die from old age i'd say it was the feeding of the pinky that caused the death, if not that then i'm stumped and would put it down to a sad and unfortunate spot of badluck.

[wayne balcombe]

I would also say 4-5 crickets twice a week is a little excessive for a spider with a 6 inch leg span. i feed my larger spiders 1 every 2-3 days and if you need a bigger food source try using dubai cockroaches.

[Brian goosen]

Wayne
I thank you for your advice and help regarding this matter, I have a better understanding on this now, it makes allot of sense what have told me and will put it to good practice, it is very unfortunate that we first have to make a mistake before we can learn from it. Once again thank you for clearing this up for me.

Brian