Feeding your African egg-eating snake

There is lots of misinformation on the internet regarding things such as if an egg-eating snake can drink a cracked open egg (spoiler alert: they can’t). I also see questions, both in private messages and on public forums like Reddit, for example, “how often should I feed him?” and, “my egg eater hasn’t eaten in months, what do I do?”

In this post, I will write about everything you need to know about feeding your African egg eater.

Firstly, what do egg-eating snakes eat? This is a question that has been asked several times to both me and my sister, who is the seller of finch eggs across the UK. It’s in the name: they eat eggs, and only eggs. I have heard of people feeding their egg eaters lizard eggs, but I would suggest that you feed your snake bird eggs as that is what they would eat in the wild.

A smaller/thinner egg eater (like a hatchling or a male) can take small eggs from finches, budgies, canaries, and lovebirds, and a larger egg eater (like an older female) can eat button quail eggs and, at her full-grown size, might be able to handle a coturnix quail egg.

I see a few people on Instagram feeding teeny-tiny snakes massive eggs. This bothers me because snakes will vomit if their meal is too large. Vomiting and regurgitation of the shell are not to be confused; the latter is completely normal, however your snake should not be throwing up the yolk or white.

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To the left and in the middle is my male, who I feed exclusively finch eggs. He can eat two or three at a time, but I normally choose to feed him only one egg at a time. To the right is my female, who I feed finch eggs or button quail eggs (normally the latter, depending on her pickiness as well as availability of eggs)

Noodle, my male, is happy to eat out of my hand, so I take him up on that quite often. However, both of my girls are shy when eating, so I just leave their eggs in their enclosures for them to pick at when they please.

Some snakes are very stressed out by being taken from their enclosure, so please tread lightly. Stress can lead to anorexia in snakes, and if you’re reading this, I would imagine that that is the last thing you want.

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I typically give Noodle one or two eggs a week, since I know he is definitely going to eat them. As the girls are a little less easy, I give them up to three or four eggs in a faux bird’s nest in the hopes they’ll eat a few; it is incredibly rare for my females to eat all of their eggs, hence why I give them more to choose from, but they should only be eating one or two if they are eating regularly. While I typically wouldn’t feed Noodle more than two eggs, I’m fine with a female eating more because of how often they don’t eat – “making up for lost time,” I suppose.

How many eggs you need may vary. If you’re feeding your snake one egg a week and he’s getting too thin, up his intake. If your snake is getting fat, lower it accordingly.

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A lot of the time, the eggs remain uneaten – that’s fine. Egg-eating snakes will go periods of time where they don’t eat, and I’ve noticed my females are especially picky in comparison to the boys. If your snake isn’t eating, I would suggest you weigh it on a regular basis – say, every week or two – and make sure it isn’t losing a significant amount of weight. Also check that they’re physically healthy (no spine sticking out, well-hydrated, not lethargic, etc.) as well.

If your snake isn’t eating to the point where it’s underweight, it wouldn’t hurt to take it to a vet. While there is, to my knowledge, not a size guide for egg eating snakes, you can compare yours to mine: my ~31 inch two-year-old females are between 65g and 90g, and my male is about 30 grams at what I can guess is around 25 inches (but is gaining weight slowly, and is in need of re-measuring!).

My female, Rice, has been zigzagging between 65g and 75g within the last few months, but I would like to get her to a minimum of 80g and maintain at that, since 65g looks too thin to me. Saying that, her spine has always looked a little funky.

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My snakes will wake up and become active around the time of day that it gets darker. In the winter, since two of my snakes get natural light, this is about 5pm, and in the summer, this is normally too late for me to catch a glimpse of them. Some days I don’t even see them at all, and if it’s been two or more days, I will open up their enclosure to check on them.

I put eggs in their enclosure when they’re asleep (or hand feed Noodle when he’s awake) and wait. Sometimes it takes a few days for the snakes to want to eat, but the eggs are still fine by then.

I would recommend that you keep your eggs in the fridge if you’re not using them. Float testing finch and button quail eggs doesn’t seem to work since perfectly edible eggs often float. I am no scientist, but I would imagine this is because the egg is so light; as a regular chicken egg gets older, the air pocket inside it gets larger as water is replaced by air, which causes it to float.

You don’t need to let eggs heat to room temp or anything if they’re cold in the refrigerator – Noodle happily eats a cold egg, and if you’re leaving it in your snake’s enclosure, it’ll warm up in time anyway.

How long you leave your eggs in an enclosure is solely up to you. They can live a few weeks unrefrigerated before they go bad, but I wouldn’t recommend letting it get to that point. I would say that if your snake hasn’t eaten the egg within a week or two, it isn’t interested in it. Your egg shouldn’t smell bad at all.

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I hope that this was a helpful post. Do feel free to comment or contact me with further questions.