Chicken for turtles/bluetongues etc?

[Insect Direct]

is chicken safe for reptiles?

[DonnaM]

I know that NZ chicken eggs (and shells), carry salmonella and campylobacter so they need to be cooked before feeding to turtles. Sometimes I feed whole boiled eggs, usually just the boiled shells. I wouldn't risk feeding raw chicken meat to my turtles, tho would be great to be able to throw in a chicken carcass and let them go for it...

Perhaps other countries don't have chickens that carry those 2 diseases.

But thats just my opinion.

[firefish]

I fed raw chicken to my cats, but they eat raw rats and mice too (that they catch)

So if your reptiles were left in the wild, what would they eat? (don't snakes eat raw eggs? )

[DonnaM]

In the wild they could eat fish, insects, dead things in the water, their own eggs, babies....etc.

[Iszac]

I know that my father in australia feeds raw chicken necks to the goannas, but they eat anything :lol: . I think he has also fed chicken necks to the frillies but not 100% sure, Ill ask him tonight

[alanmin4304]

Chickens can carry salmonella. So can turtles, lizards, humans, cats, dogs, rats, mice, sparrows and just about any animal. I was told by a senior member of Maf that the importation of turtles was banned because they can carry salmonella (yea right)

[FMcLaren]

Wow donna, Where do you keep 16 sliders

[DonnaM]

In a couple of ponds at the moment...lovely day today...have popped the others out in the ponds today as well....over winter I had 28 turtles in the house...don't ask about the power bills....

Also the info I got about chickens was from Mark Feldman from the herp. society.

[repto]

Mark Feldman tested a heap of turtles,pond water and turtle eggs from myself and alot of other keepers all over the north island(not sure if got down sth but may have?)the tests were done in a hospital labratory and all came back negative.My turtles are outdoors year round and exposed to all sorts of things such as wild birds overhead and I have been knowen to throw the odd dead chick etc in there at times.There are many different strains and types apparently but it would seem its not as common as purported,I always wash my hands etc all the same and tell others to bear it in mind when handling their animals.

I

[DantezGirl]

omg people can carry salmonella ect as well oh no and the precious cats and dogs better slap a no export and import sticker on them as well i reckon all the above do just as much damage to wildlife than any bio risk lol

[alanmin4304]

There are many different seroyypes of Salmonella and they can be passed to humans but some are pretty specific to certain hosts. You can be pretty sure that if you get a certain strain you would have contracted it from lizards, turtles, chickens or sparrows etc. That doesn't make it any worse and your advice to wash hands after handling any animal is the way to go. I wish sometimes that the powers that be would tell the truth a bit more often. To ban anything because it can carry Salmonella is a load of the best, but to ban it because it might eat trout or salmon eggs is another thing. I have investigated Salmonella cases that could be pretty well traced back to lizards on the west coast, chickens from Australia, and sparrows amongst other things, all by the identified serotype. The problem is that by the time you get the results of the serotyping the case is well down the track. Some serotypes are more virulent than others and typhoid is a Salmonella (Salmonella typhi). I feed fish to my turtles and the river they come from may well contain Salmonella and campylobacter because there are emergency overflows from the sewer going into it as well as stormwater which no doubt picks up messages left by birds, cats and dogs etc. There are germies out there so get used to it.

[Navarre]

The other thing Alan,

Is that some herpt keepers wont swap animals unless they are swabbed for Salmonella. But some recent studies suggest that up to 60% of the native population carry it anyway....!!!

It does tend to be species specific. And it was my impression that where we use E Coli to digest food in our gut some reptiles use Salmonella to do the same thing...not sure but i think I read that some where.

Navarre

[alanmin4304]

It has been a while but I think S. St paul is in the native lizard population---I think that was the one in the lizards around the walking tracks on the West Coast.

[alanmin4304]

Another case was a very rare strain of Salmonella which developed in a world poultry expert out here to lecture to poultry keepers and it was not in NZ but was common in poultry in Australia (which is where he had just been) Have they banned poultry yet? (Jamie Oliver is working on it.)