BP Still Hungry?

[maverickgtr]

So our male bp is in shed and I zoned out and got him a rat. My bad. He's not eating it and I don't have anything to put it in for next week and I don't know how I feel about releasing it into the park across the street, or just releasing it in general.

BUT my female is in an adjacent glass tank [he's in a glass tank as well] and she's thoroughly stalking the rat through the glass. She hasn't tried to strike, she's just staring it down like, "can I have that if he doesn't want it?!" She just down two whole large adult mice that were frozen thawed.

My question is this, would it be bad for her to take a small adult rat if she already had two large adult mice? It's about the right size for her to eat. Also, will she even take a live rat if she's only been given f/t prey?

[OhhWatALoser]

A little extra food won't hurt em

[Karbon]

If she will eat it then I would think she'd be fine.

Snakes will know when they're full. They don't just keep eating until they explode like fish do.

[maverickgtr]

Cool, next question, do you think if I give her the live rat, will it effect her accepting f/t? It's infinitely easier to get f/t here than live...

[Karbon]

Well...
I have always fed mine F/T so I don't know for sure...

However, I guess it is possible that she could aquire a taste for live instead of F/T but i'm not sure that can happen with just one feeding.

[maverickgtr]

Does anyone have any tips for how to humanely kill a rat? My female [same snakie] has severe scarring from when they suspect her previous owner left too large a rat in her tank with her and it ate off part of her tail. I've read about putting dry ice in water in an air tight container, but I can't find any dry ice around here...

[boyyoyo]

Where did you get the rat from, most pet stores I know of will allow you to return a live rat for instore credit that you could use next feeding day. Might be worth a try, or you could put up "Free Rat" on craigs list or the like.

[maverickgtr]

I got it from Petland. They're the only place that sells live feeders in my area. The Petco even closed a couple months ago so I can't even go there. The Petland says when you buy them that you can't return them unless they're sick or die in the first seven days. And then you just get a replacement.

My female's still acting like she wants him though. We have him in a critter carrier and she's out looking for food. But I don't want to take a chance of turning her off f/t or p/k prey since live is such a pain to get.