Any luck feeding a ball python something other than rodents?

I'm just curious if anybody has any personal experience with feeding a ball python anything other than mice or rats. Like small birds(even a baby chicken) or frogs or something else. It's the holiday season so I figured I could do something fun with my snake and feed him something else for once.

My python is 3 or 4 years old, I got him when he was 1 month. He was weaned on mice, both live and frozen/thawed, and as he's grown I've increased the size and switched to rats.

I'm not interested in trying gerbils or hamsters based on the rumors that they are addictive.

I've heard of people feeding chicks on occasion.

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I've read that in the wild they will take small birds. I haven't tried mine on chicks though.

I most definitely would consider making the switch to chickens because they are cheaper and cleaner. I wouldn't have to deal with rats pooping from the store all the way to my snake's tank.

Problem is I can only get them frozen (for $1.25!!!!!!) from my locale. I want to start with a live one or two so that my python can get a taste, smell, and feel for it's food. I'm not just going to throw a corpse in there and expect him to know what it is, lol.

Anybody know any places that sell live chicks around the Minnesota metro area? If nothing else, there are tons of websites that stock all different breeds of chickens so I can do that - I just need to know what particular breed of chick my bro is most likely to swallow.

Just to clarify on my last post: moments ago I spoke with my local snake shop in depth over the phone and the guy told me about their frozen chicken supply, and that chicks ARE addictive in the same way gerbils are. On a positive note, they are so much cheaper than anything else in my area. A mouse is a few dollars; a rat is 5+ dollars depending on size; and a gerbil is like 15 bucks. For $1.25/frozen chick I can feed my python twice as much as I normally do. For my snake, estimates seem to be that 2 chicks would be the same as a small rat. $5 of frozen chicks and I can get my snake faaat lol.

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Originally Posted by Hydrolicious

Just to clarify on my last post: moments ago I spoke with my local snake shop in depth over the phone and the guy told me about their frozen chicken supply, and that chicks ARE addictive in the same way gerbils are. On a positive note, they are so much cheaper than anything else in my area. A mouse is a few dollars; a rat is 5+ dollars depending on size; and a gerbil is like 15 bucks. For $1.25/frozen chick I can feed my python twice as much as I normally do. For my snake, estimates seem to be that 2 chicks would be the same as a small rat. $5 of frozen chicks and I can get my snake faaat lol.

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There's a lot of problems here and you should take a step back and re-evaluate.

-I don't understand your price comparisons. You can order frozen rats for $1.25 also...just check out any one of the hundreds of frozen rodent suppliers.

-Chicks are not cleaner then rats. I breed rats and I breed chickens. My chickens are free range and still get fairly dirty. Chickens from a factory are cesspools of decay.

-Finally, we know ball pythons can survive in captivity on a diet of rats or mice and thrive. While they do eat birds in the wild, birds make up just a fraction of their varied diet. You have absolutely no idea if they can thrive on a diet of solely chicks. I'm guessing they won't and this isn't a good idea.

Getting your snake fat is not a good idea either. Work on steady body gain now with appropriate feedings of rats or mice and you'll have a healthy snake.

I'll just add one more note to consider....and this is only something I've read from various sources, I've not ever tried it myself. Chickens/chicks make snake poop runny and very, very nasty. Doesn't necessarily mean it's "bad" for them....but the clean-up may not be worth it.

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Originally Posted by JLC

I'll just add one more note to consider....and this is only something I've read from various sources, I've not ever tried it myself. Chickens/chicks make snake poop runny and very, very nasty. Doesn't necessarily mean it's "bad" for them....but the clean-up may not be worth it.

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I've heard this one a lot. My experience has been that this can be the case when feeding live chicken. I have not found this to be the case when feeding FT. I don't know why that would be. I feed FT chicken somewhat regularly to carpet and sumatran short tail pythons and I've noticed no difference in the consistency of the poop. Maybe because they still eat primarily rats/rabbits. Chicken probably makes up about 20% of their diet.

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Originally Posted by DennisM

I've heard this one a lot. My experience has been that this can be the case when feeding live chicken. I have not found this to be the case when feeding FT. I don't know why that would be.

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That's very interesting. I wonder if it's because of the bacterial load? I would imagine that live chickens contain a lot more bacteria then frozen where most of the bacteria would have been killed off by freezing.

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Originally Posted by MarkS

That's very interesting. I wonder if it's because of the bacterial load? I would imagine that live chickens contain a lot more bacteria then frozen where most of the bacteria would have been killed off by freezing.

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I think this is a very good guess.

I've never tried feeding birds to BPs, maybe I'll try some this weekend, got plenty of chicken and quail on hand. Only recently did it come to my attention that they are on the wild menu. Still, rodents are the staple of their diet and should remain so in captivity.

When you say chicks, what size do you mean? Usually chicks are 1-3 day old, which isn't a suitable meal, mostly downy feathers and feet, very little actual meat and even less calcium. A chicken large enough to be nutritionally complete is too big for a ball python to eat. Bird on occasion would be fine but if you want to feed only chickens or your ball gets stuck on them you might have problems. I've got a bunch of quail right now for my larger carnivores and tried offering some smaller ones to a boa and sstp, neither would touch them though.

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Originally Posted by DennisM

I've never tried feeding birds to BPs, maybe I'll try some this weekend

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Well, I offered a day old chick to a couple of small BPs and got no takers. Rather than continue the experiment with the remaining appropriately sized BPs, I just fed it to a small carpet python. I did however get a yearling BP to take a rabbit pink (about the size of a weanling rat) without hesitation. Nonetheless, I suspect a weaned rat is a better meal, so I'll just stick with that.

Mice and rats should be the consistent prey. Anything else should just be a treat and offered occaisionally. Chicks do however contain high amounts of protein. They also have considerable amounts of calcium as well. Unfortunately excessive amounts of feathers.

I feed my CB Ball Python, 19", thawed out one day old chicks. He takes them without any hesitation. :snake:

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Originally Posted by Hydrolicious

I'm just curious if anybody has any personal experience with feeding a ball python anything other than mice or rats. Like small birds(even a baby chicken) or frogs or something else. It's the holiday season so I figured I could do something fun with my snake and feed him something else for once.

My python is 3 or 4 years old, I got him when he was 1 month. He was weaned on mice, both live and frozen/thawed, and as he's grown I've increased the size and switched to rats.

I'm not interested in trying gerbils or hamsters based on the rumors that they are addictive.

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Mine loves meatballs in some gravy. They also occasionally love a slice of meat lovers pizza. But honestly why change what works?

I always have a variety of different feeders on hand as I have multiple species. I have some ball pythons that readily eat a lot of different things.

here's a list of feeders some of my bp's have taken.
Chicks
Quail
guinea piglets
hamsters
ASF
gerbels
rats
mice
degu
rabbit pinks

Just curious, and wondering if anyone knows... when bp's eat birds in the wild, do they actively seek out ambushes where they might catch birds as opposed to rodents? Or do they eat birds mostly when there aren't enough rodents around or they haven't gotten lucky in awhile? Or do they mostly seek out places where they'll find rodents but take whatever opportunity presents itself?

I guess the corollary to this would be, is a different prey item actually a "treat", and if so, which ones? In general, "treats' for animals (and for people!) have higher amounts of certain nutrients, calories, fat, sugar, salt, etc, than the normal diet. The things that make something a treat tend to be things that the animal does need, but that is hard enough to come by in its natural environment that getting enough takes a certain amount of extra motivation. (The problem for modern humans and sometimes for their overweight pets is that we're wired to crave fat and sugar because our ancestors needed those things but they were relatively hard to come by, whereas in modern life you could totally eat nothing but cookie dough if you wanted)

But a snake basically leaves the complicated part of getting balanced nutrition to its prey animal, and then just slurps down the whole thing. But at the same time, different prey animals do have different nutritional content (not to mention the difference between a malnourished rat and an obese rat or whatever). So do some prey animals constitute "treats" to snakes, like millet for budgies, mango for my friend's tortoise, honey glazed ham for my dad's cat, apples for horses, or cookie dough for me?

Or is it more like, I had a latte today and a cappuccino yesterday and a flat white the day before that, but it's really all just different amounts of milk and espresso and even if I have a preference I don't care that much and if it's coffee time I'll strike at whatever's in front of me?