Varying diet in bp's?

[icygirl]

From what I understand, in keeping most animals, one of the keys to a healthy animal is varying its diet. For example, if you kept an iguana, feeding it one type of veggie isn't very smart, and it's good to mix it up and offer many types of food (provided the plants/fruits are safe to eat and nutritious).

I was wondering if the same could be true for ball pythons. Yes, in the wild they eat mostly rodents, but I'm sure the type of rodent is not always the same, and that they can occasionally eat birds or other animals they come across.

Would it make sense to vary the type of rodents we offer to our BP's? What about offering a small chick once in awhile? Or, would this upset the BP's routine and make it less likely to eat on a regular basis? Thoughts on this?

[butters!]

i would say stick to mice or rats.there is really no reason to switch its food.it will be more expensive to feed a chick or gerbil as well.

[hondo1967]

Being they consume the entire animal, there getting all the nutrition they need.

[icygirl]

Being they consume the entire animal, there getting all the nutrition they need.

Right, and that's why it really isn't a big concern. But if you broke down the body of a mouse and the body of a chick, wouldn't there be a difference in nutrients in the two? Just curious here.

[hondo1967]

They get vitamins and protien and calcium thats all they need.

[stormwulf133]

Your idea has merit and while it seems people are quick to blow it off, maybe they shouldn't. To my knowledge no studies have been done on if variety would improve the health.

[Mochelem]

Its a good sounding idea, but seeing how the longest living ball python in history was over 48 years old in a zoo and Im sure it had a mouse or rat diet.... Seeing how the longevity of life you would have to do a 50 year + study on this... Seeing how they live for a long time i will go the cheaper route and feed mice and rats...

[kc261]

It might be possible to get a healthier BP by feeding it a varied diet.

However... as has been pointed out, there are no studies to either prove or disprove this.

We do know that BPs can live long, healthy lives when feed exclusively rats and/or mice. It appears that they get everything they need in balanced ratios from this diet.

We do know that BPs can be prone to hunger strikes. One of the things that has been observed to throw them off food is offering them something other than their usual.

Compare this with your example of an iguana, where we know it does not get everything it needs from any one food source. And, although I don't know much about iguanas, I'm not aware of them refusing to eat Veggie A anymore after they are offered Veggie B one time. So iguanas get a clear benefit, and not much risk from a varied diet. A BP gets no known benefit, and a known risk from trying to vary their diet.

[dr del]

Hi,

My ,

I am guilty of switching food items occasionally - mainly because I have a few that seem kind of fussy (might be related to the fact I only feed F/T ) and if they start turning their nose up at rats I can often tempt them with mice or chicks.

My big female adores chicks and would eat them till the cows came home so for a while she got a rat and a chick every week.
This was more to use up the bag of 50 chicks I had to buy from the shop as they refused to split the bag.

My male got really fussy during breeding time - which has been the last 9 months.

Currently he ignores rats but will lunge for mice as though he had never seen food in his life - a couple of months ago he wasn't keen on mice either but ate chicks with relish and would take the occasional rat. My personal theory on this is he does it to annoy me.

The only things I noticed (and which may be completely false or for reasons I am not aware of);

When eating chicks I thought I saw a colour change with the blushing on their backs becoming much more gold/ bronze looking.

As I was always feeding chicks +plus something else rather than chicks alone I didn't really have any problems with their poop getting horribly smelly either.

However I am not convinced a diet of chicks is all that healthy so would never really recommend it and stopped once the bag of chicks I had ran out. If I ever have to buy more I will try and document any colour changes rather than having to rely on my memory.

So, to recap, I use changes in prey mainly to stimulate fussy feeders mainly and if the animal is eating regularly then I tend to keep to the routine. There is one major exception to this though brought on by neccesity.

Smaller rats are quite hard to get a regular local supply of as well so all my snakes tend to get started on mice then changed to rats once they are eating a more available size - tonight was my lesser and small females first rats for example.

The lesser is 255g and the female 633g.

She will happily eat multiples so has been getting a couple of mice whereas he will apparently only eat one meal per sitting which is why the disparity.

If, for some reason, the smaller size of rats aren't available then I will switch back to mice if possible.

I would have thought live feeders have a very good advantage over us F/T'ers here in that they can gutload their snakes prey to boost the range of vitamins, minerals, colours enhancing compounds etc if they are of a scientific or curious bent.

That might make an intresting experiment for someone.

So, while the range of different prey I tried was small, I only really noticed small superficial colour changes which could have been caused by something else.

The health of the snakes did not seem changed to me but the time was short. Whether someone would risk the health of the snake out of curiosity about long term effects of one specific food source I don't know.

This has turned a bit rambley so I will stop now.


dr del