Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Are adult quails good as staple food for a bumese python? Which is better nutritionally for my snake?Adult quails or rats?

Wouldn’t they cost 40 or 50 percent more than rats of equal weight? And it wouldn’t take too long for your snake to get large enough to require LOTS of 150 gram birds to fill it up! As far as which is better nutritionally, no one has done any controlled, long-term feeding trials with snakes, so no one knows.

My feeling is a Burmese would thrive on a quail diet since they seem to like birds so much. And once it got larger, it could be switched to chickens if you wanted to continue with a poultry diet. The only real drawback would be the potential for salmonella bacteria, a real concern with raw poultry. One vet who posts on these forums, Scott Michaels, said he never fed birds to his snakes because of this danger.

-Joan

I would think that virtually any "whole food" prey would be a fine "staple food" for a burmese. In the wild they are oportunistic eaters and will take anything from rodents to birds to small preditors to crocodillians. I'm sure all are beneficial in their own way. So are quails good for a burmese diet? Sure. For a while. But burmese get quite large quite fast and would soon require something much larger than a quail. And a drawback that I can see is that it's often hard to "switch" a snake used to birds,... to rodents (rabbits). So if it isn't too much hardship, my advice would be to raise your burm on rodents and keep it on rodents. Once it is well established on rodents there is no reason why you can't treat it with an occasional quail.

As far as nutritional value is concerned,... there was a member that used to post very interesting data on the nutritional values of different food items. It was very informative and even gave a breakdown of percentages of fat versus protein versus calcium, of virtually every stage (size/age) of the food animal. Unfortunately I am unable to remember the name of that poster, but I'm sure that someone else reading this can remember and post it here. But I'd think that that person can find out and post for you, exacting nutritional information on quails vs rats.

>>Are adult quails good as staple food for a bumese python? Which is better nutritionally for my snake?Adult quails or rats?
-----
"Half of my enemies are dead.... I have yet to meet the other half." [Ghengis Kahn]

"He was such a sweet boy, always so nice. He used to help me take out my garbage every Friday." [Jeffery Dahmer's neighbor]

"Sure,... you say that now. But what will you say when you are looking into my dark, merciless eyes." [Walter Wego]

"Charlie won because we never knew where he was. We had superior numbers, but he had stealth, patience, and sheer determination to prevail. We lost the moment we decided to engage, only it took us 10 years to lie down and die." [General Enevi Tability on the Vietnam war]

While the nutrient composition of various animals is well known, the “nutritional value” as you put it, or efficacy of any particular whole animal diet versus any other whole animal diet is unfortunately unknown. Until controlled feeding trials are conducted with snakes (will they ever be?), we’ll never know with certainty. Anyway, click here or follow the link below to one paper, Nutrient Composition of Whole Vertebrate Prey (Excluding Fish) Fed in Zoos.

Wasn't it Tango who used to post on this topic?

-Joan

Nutrient Composition of Whole Vertebrate Prey

Joan, this is a very interesting topic because I often see discussions on this and other forums, for example, that rats are much more nutritious than mice. In content perhaps, but what are the exact nutritional requirements of a snake in order to allow that snake to grow, remain healthy, breed, produce eggs, etc.? I have a 30 year old ball python who has had nothing but mice its entire life. Everyone on the bp forum will tell you that you should feed rats to a ball python.....that's a bunch of "bullroar". Even though we have come a LONG way in terms of our knowledge base as it pertains to herps and proper husbandry, we still have a LONG way to go.

Rob Carmichael, Curator
The Wildlife Discovery Center at Elawa Farm
CIty of Lake Forest Parks & Recreation (IL)