stunning the prey and gerbils?

[remsin76]

i heard some of u say putting stunned prey into the tank. what does it mean to stun and how do i do it? that whole thing with wacking the mouse in a sack and breaking its spine is too gruesome for me.
oh yea and i decided to keep my baby ball. and i recently found a guy that sells pre killed gerbils by the gallon bags. he's a guy from my local herp society. is it ok for me to feed my snake gerbils for its whole life? cause i know when it gets big it'll need more nutrition and i heard rats are the best. also the gerbils are too small so will this mean i'll ahve to feed an adult ball 2 gerbils per feeding?

:confused:

[Big Mike]

It's always best to feed your snake prey that is already dead. Stunned prey may wake up and attack the snake and live prey is even worse. Stunned would be if you bonked it but not hard enough to kill it.

There should be no problem feeding gerbils to your BP it's whole life...as long as you can get them. They are expensive if you don't have a source. The problem seems to be that some balls will grow accustomed to gerbils and then refuse to eat mice which can be a pain if you have to buy them from a pet store.

You can feed more than one prey item at one sitting if you think that one is not enough. Rats are good because you can get rats that are big enough to be a meal for the largest BPs but if you want to feed gerbils then make sure you feed enough of them to make a good meal.

Good Luck

[tHeGiNo]

Like Mikey said, I would really recommend AGAINST using gerbils. Keep in mind that it is highely likely your ball will eat nothing other then gerbils after a few feedings on them. Keep this in mind, as you have years and years of feeding this little guy and gerbils are quite pricey. Not to mention, when your snake becomes an adult, he/she will need several of these per feeding. Stunned refers to giving it a wack in the head before throwing it in. However, I would not let go of the feeder if I was feeding this way. It may regain consciousness and do some damage to your snake. If you do decide to stick to gerbils, NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER feed live! These guys have amazing teeth and would have no trouble doing your snake in!

[vanderkm]

As Mike says, gerbils are expensive to buy or breed (they cost a lot to raise - smaller infrequent litters, don't breed well in harem situations, waste feed and grow slowly) so they tend to be hard to get. Our experience with using gerbils for feeders is that ball pythons really do get fixated on them and will refuse mice or rats. Other snake species we have fed them to do not seem to care much.

I would never feed gerbils to a ball python that had accepted either mice or rats, and I would make every effort to get a ball python started on rats as young as possible. Even if you have a reliable source of gerbils, things change. If you ever have to place your snake (everyone says it won't happen, but it does!) it is really hard to get someone to take a ball python that needs gerbils. We also found that while our carpet pythons will happily eat many mice or gerbils in a row, our ball pythons tended to only want one prey item and then their feeding response would drop off and it would be a week before they were interested again. As Mike says, can be hard to get enough small gerbils to make a decent sized meal for an adult ball, and they may be reluctant to eat multiple prey.

just my opinion,

mary v.

[remsin76]

well since its my baby's first meal i was thinking about offering him a young rat. a fuzzy rat perhaps. i heard it is almost impossible to feed f/t on the first attempt so i am going to feed him a live rat that is young enough so that it cant cause harm. after it feeds a few times (like 2 or 3) on live i will try to switch it over to f/t rats. sound like a good plan?

[jncoclub]

Our ball wouldn't eat anything but gerbils. I started scenting a small rat with a gerbil by just putting them in the same container for awhile. She would also only eat black gerbils, so we kept picking black or dark rats to not change too much too fast. Over time she took rats that weren't scented and would even take all white ones. It's a patience game.

[tHeGiNo]

well since its my baby's first meal i was thinking about offering him a young rat. a fuzzy rat perhaps.

You might want to try a rat pup first, they will sometimes eat adult mice from hatching.

i heard it is almost impossible to feed f/t on the first attempt so i am going to feed him a live rat that is young enough so that it cant cause harm. after it feeds a few times (like 2 or 3) on live i will try to switch it over to f/t rats

That isn't true. I would try feeding f/t or fresh killed before even thinking about live. They are small rats, yes, but the potential is still there. It is always nice to start off frozen/thawed so that you have no problems, as far as being a finicky eater, in the future.

[Big Mike]

I agree with Gino. Try the F/T first and give it a few tries. It really is a step in the wrong direction if you have to feed live and then get them back onto F/T.

Then again...some balls will eat just about anything.

Good Luck

[TardGirl]

I would not give it gerbils if i were you. My one ball python will not eat anything but gerbils, she won't even eat prekilled gerbils. For her to eat she has to have a live gerbil and them things get very mean when the snake grabs ahold of them :( So i would avoid giving your snake a gerbil unless you have to. Cause it seems once they get the taste of gerbil they hardly ever go back to rats.