When can they eat chickens?

[carolineleven]

I will soon buy a 275g male and wonder at what age/weight balls can begin eating chickens? And do they ever need bigger than newly hatched chickens?

I wonder because I could easily buy newly laid eggs from my sister, and hatch them myself.

If you think that chickens are a poor choice, please let me know.

[Sauzo]

I've never heard of a ball python eating chicks. I know boas will eat chicks and quails as well as rabbits but boas will eat anything pretty much. Not sure I would want to try chicks on my ball python.

[Deluge]

I did research on this as well, as I have a feed shop right up the street that sells chicks for dirt cheap. From what I gather, chicks lack the amount of calcium a BP needs to grow, so you may need to add supplements to make up for that. Then, you have to see if the BP will even accept it as prey. In the end, I decided to stick to rats because my BP is feeding well off of them, so why mess up a good thing?

[John1982]

Birds are fine to feed if he'll take them. My pituophis diet is roughly 30% chicken and while I often offer one to my regius, I have yet to have any show interest. Luckily the pits practically inhale the things and nothing is ever wasted.

I don't weigh my feeders, just eyeball everything, but I guess it'd take about 2-3 chicks to equal 1 small rat in weight. I'd wait until he is in the 500-700g range to offer a hatchling chicken. If you want to try fowl sooner, and spend more money, you can get quail he'd be able to handle now.

[200xth]

Chicks can be used as a staple food.

http://www.academia.edu/418766/Suita...captive_snakes

Several of mine that will take them currently get day old chicks as a regular part of their food rotation. The chicks average 33g to 43g.

Because they're shaped differently than rodents, I've started waiting until the BP's are around 600g to start trying them on chicks. You can go smaller, but I personally don't.

I don't think they're a poor choice at all. You may need to double up the feedings depending on the size of the chicks, but if you have plenty of access to food, this won't be a problem.

[Skiploder]

Ball pythons eat a lot of birds in the wild....and they climb trees to do it.