my girl has been large enough to eat small rats for a bit and ve been putting off feeding her rats because A- ive still got a small bag of adult mice left, and B- i became a rat fan after getting my ball python. im not saying i wont feed her rats, i just want to know if there are any other options of food items. so what else can a ball python eat besides rats and whats their nutrition value compared to rats? ive heard they can eat young chicks but i dont know what size a small chick is and i dont know how they compare to the nutrition my girl would be getting compared to if i fed her a rat.
I was wondering about the same thing... I wanted to try chicks too! So you are feeding frozen then? Do you know how long they can be frozen before they loose their nutritional value?
yes, i use frozen. i have no idea how long they last though, that thought has never crossed my mind, i dont think ive needed to know though since my mice only stay frozen for maybe 2 months at most.
Hi Folks, You can feed day-old chicks BUT the poo will be very runny and smelly so be warned. BP's that have been off their food and refusing to eat will very often take a f/t chick. All Frozen food should be use within 6 months. Generally speaking, rats contain all the essential vits, minerals and D3 that a snake need so thats the best way to go. The following list will give you an idea, it's listed in the following order. Crude Protein....Crude fat....Calcium...Phosphorus, the ideal Ca should be 2:1. These are show as percentages per dry mass. Day old Chick...64.9...22.4...1.69...1.22....weight N/A Adult mouse....55.8...23.6...2.98...1.72....weight 10 grs Adult rat....61.9...32.6...2.62...1.48.....weight 50g + As you can see the mouse and rat have a better Ca ratio than the chick but the chick has higher Protein and less fat than rat/mouse. All this info and more, can be found at Rodent Pro Personally I would stick with the rodents as this would be their normal type prey in wild. Hope this helps
that is helpful, thank you. ill probably just stick with rats then. i dont supose anyone would know this seeing as how this is a reptile forum, but would anyone know if my rat boys would be freaked out if i fed my snake a rat in the same room as them? i do it with mice all the time and they dont mind, but then again mice are part of a rat's natural diet.
well i dont have any experience with this so i wouldnt know but i wouldnt think so, but if your worried about it just make sure the rats cant see the feeding process
hello Shanna66, your ? was what other pray items with a bp eat. in the wild they eat gerbbels, that is their main pray item. i wouldnt feed one to my bp for they are mean they have a tazmainian attitude and nails and teeth of a rat. they also will eat hamsters pretty readily. I feed live. i dont feed dead. this info has come from a vet that specializes in snakes. of our ilk. im a proud owner of my bp. lol. shy
well i prefer to avoid live feedings, plus my girl is an idiot and i just know she would be killed by live food. i love her, but she is just really slow. and i dont have the money to pay for hamsters all the time. i do plan on breeding natal rats after my boyfriend and i get a house.
When I first bought my BP, he was very sick. He had a vitamin deficiency along with a GI type infection. After he saw a vet, took his meds and got rid of all infections he refused to eat. I had to put him on a liquid carnivorous diet for 6 weeks, then force feed him 5 pinkies a week, which was pretty gross! This went on for a good year and every month or two I would try to introduce a live mouse, but he would absolutely refuse to eat it. Then I heard about gerbils and gave it a try. He practically inhaled it!!! He ate gerbils for four months then slowly switched to mice only and now he is on a mouse diet. I can not bring myself to feed him rats because of the serebral spinal fluid that leaks out of them so he eats 2-4 mice a week. His vet says that's fine and it's just as nutritious as feeding him a larger rat.
This web site has a very detailed breakdown of different animals and their food value. http://74.125.45.132/search?q=cache:EgK1bF...;cd=1&gl=us Just be careful what you ask for. If the snake likes what you feed it better than the mice/rats it's used to it might not go back. Inducing a feeding issue in an otherwise eating snake is not easy to fix, nor the smartest thing. FWIW, I did try a hamster once. A local pet shop had one that was too aggressive to sell as a pet and asked if I would just take it and put it out of their misery. I have a BP that is a picky eater, so I thought maybe she would take something different. She wouldn't even look at it. I took the hamster back a week later, after a couple of tries. If you are looking for something other than normal rats, African Soft Furred rats are very good. My difficult eater takes those every time. I actually started breeding them because of it. I still will not feed them to my other snakes though. I don't want to get them used to it when that is all my other one will take.