do boas digest hair?

[gravity]

This is probably a ridiculous question, but do boas digest the hair of the rat? The reason I'm asking is that I recently noticed something strange in my boas cage.

I came back from a drill weekend with the NG and I noticed that he had pooped and there was a grey mass of moist hair. I would assume it came out with the poop but I was wondering if it is possible that it was regurgitated.

Is this a normal occurrence? Do boas poop out the undigested rat hair? I just went from rat pinkies to pre-weanling so this was his first encounter with hair on his food.

Please let me know if this is something I should be concerned about or if this is completely normal.

Thanks,
Adam

[tatdaddy]

Re: do boas digest hair?

I wouldn't wirrie about it. My little guy sometimes has hair in his poop as well. It is normal.

[ClayEnglish]

Re: do boas digest hair?

While minute amounts may actually be digested, by and large rodent hair in general is not digested. I believe rat hair is digested slightly more than mice, which is seldom digested.

And yes the hair is almost always passed as waste.

This is one of the main reasons I do not feed mice to my boas. Mice have a lot more hair than rats. A lot more, especially if you compare it to total weight of the rodent. Get a mouse wet and you can really see how much of the little guys are hair.

Nothing wrong with this. It is natural for boas to get as much out of the rodent as possible, it just appears that hair doesn't do them much good and therefore is generally passed.

[tatdaddy]

Re: do boas digest hair?

Yup what he said s9.gif