Gerbil feeding

[Lynsey]

Has anyone fed their ball pythons gerbils? I have heard on multiple occasions that with WC animals gerbils tend to be the favorite. If anyone has any advice on this for me I would greatly appreciate it. Also, are there any gerbil breeders online that I can order from? Thanks.

[DonMeyer]

Im sure there are breeders online

[lik3n]

i had to feed a gerbil that this girl was holding, and she wasn't paying attention and dropped it. long story short, the gerbil survived for like another day but had brain damage, we assume, cos it was crawling around in a circle and couldn't hold his head up. so i fed it to a white lipped python.

[emroul]

Feeding Gerbils to a ball python should really be very very last resort in most cases. You have heard right, though, that WC balls tend to feed rather aggresively on gerbils. The downfall with this is you may be stuck feeding gerbils to this snake forever, and that can get expensive very quickly (not to mention it's not a good idea if you don't breed the gerbils yourself or have some other reliable source for gerbils; as the ball will probably get hooked on gerbils and NEVER switch to mice or rats again). Your best bet (if you are trying to acclimate a WC ball) is just try to feed it rats. If no go at ALL, try mice. Then live (second to last resort) then a DEAD gerbil. If it doesn't accept the dead gerbil, try live. (Oooh, that cringes me to recommend that).

This is of course after several months of trying to get the snake to feed. Ball pythons are notorious for going off feed, and chances are they will feed when they are ready. No need to resort to live gerbils. I must add, that every ball is different, and some will take gerbils, then their next meal will be a f/t rat. It just all depends, but I definately wouldn't just give the ball a gerbil as its first meal with you.

Just my $0.02.

Jennifer

[FourFeathers]

And if you ever do "have to" feed it a live gerbil, DO NOT do it unsupervised. Gerbils are aggressive and they will approach and bite your snake just to "test the waters". And they will do it over and over again until the snake either kills it or until you take it out.

Gerbils are to Ball Pythons what drugs are to people.

Just say no.

[emroul]

And if you ever do "have to" feed it a live gerbil, DO NOT do it unsupervised.

Ahh yes, the most important part. Thank you for that.

Jennifer