Feeding Gerbils Instead of Mice or Rats

[eyespy]

I've worked as a veterinary surgical tech for 15 years and seen thousands of snakes that died an untimely death due to liver diseases such as fatty liver disease (the reptile version of cirrhosis) and gout. These problems are caused by a diet too high in fat and protein that the animal cannot effectively metabolize. Too low temperatures can contribute to this problem but it's mainly overfeeding that causes it.

Ball pythons were one of the most common species we saw, but I can't say for sure if they are more prone to it. Since we were a surgery-only clinic we didn't really have the tools needed to track the husbandry of a patient over its lifetime. It might just be that balls are very popular and not very active so we ran into more balls with liver disease.

Both of these diseases are usually fatal, if in the early stages you can go in surgically and remove the fatty or calcified damage and hope the liver is still healthy enough to regenerate. However, since snakes don't show obesity, dropsy and jaundice the way mammals do in liver failure it's very tough to get an early diagnosis.