I've seen a lot of people curious about feeding fowl but not too many trip reports so I thought I'd add mine. After reading that wild ball pythons eat a lot more birds than previously thought, I noticed LayneLabs offers day-old and week-old frozen quail so I ordered some of the week-olds, since the weight is about the same as a weaned rat.
40g quail vs 40g weaned rat:
Some observations on the f/t quail:
- because of their thin necks, there's no delicate way to put this, their heads tend to fall off when frozen
- when thawed they have a *much* stronger smell than frozen thawed rats! I assume this might evoke a good feeding response but it's kind of gross
- they are both longer and wider than a similar weight rat (see pic) which can give the BP some issues manipulating the feeder and figuring out how to eat it
- thawing works exactly the same as a weaned rat
My female would probably eat a chicken mcNugget if I waved it in front of her on tongs so I was pretty confident they'd get eaten. I offered the quail above and she hit it immediately, then seemed confused when she uncoiled and saw what she had. She was very determined to get it down though, and after 40 minutes of trial and error, took it back into her coils and simply crushed it until she felt she could get it down - butt-first. At one point I swear she was trying to gnaw the legs off to give herself a better shot at it. It was nervewracking to watch because I was convinced she was going to hurt herself either on the width of it or by cutting herself on the sharp bones or beak, but she was totally fine and stuffed by the end.
Now to see if the rumors of horrible bird poop are true. My male is a pretty inconsistent feeder so I want him to get on a good streak of taking rats and then I'll offer him one too - when the female was working on this one he had his head fully out of the hide sniffing around so I think he recognizes the smell as food, which is encouraging!
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