Can my young tarantula eat a pinky mouse??

Question

My spider is probably the size of my palm. Any help? She can eat 4 crickets a week and I havent fed her at all this week so she should be hungry enough for it, but the question is... is the pinky mouse too much for it?

Answer 1

I wouldnt

Answer 2

There's really no reason to feed most tarantulas a pinkie mouse. It would rarely, if ever, eat vertebrate prey. Most of their diet is other invertebrates.

Some people say that feeding pinkies can result in too much calcium and cause problem molts, but, tarantulas haven't really been studied enough to prove that conclusively. Tarantulas are ambush predators, they sit and wait for prey to come by. A pinkie mouse would never go walking by a tarantula burrow.

If you want to give your tarantula some variety, offer roaches in addition to the crickets. Roaches have a lot more nutritional value then crickets, but, they more closely resemble natural prey.