feeding and shedding question (2 for 1)

[kldoss89]

i have a male bp that is about 1 1/2 years old. he has always been very healthy (minus a mild upper resp infection several months back that the vet was able to knock out easily), curious, and never even thought about biting anyone. however, he makes me want to rip my hair out when it comes to feeding him. i know that he is actually a good eater compared to some of the stories i have read on here. he has eaten frozen/thawed perfectly every week since he was a baby, never refusing mice. my problem is that he will not take rats, ever. i have tried everything i can think of. i refuse to do live feeds because i dont want to turn him off of frozen. i have used the same color rats from the same breeder. i have left the rats to thaw on top of his cage. i have cut the rats to make blood come out to tempt him. i have left them in his cage before. ONE time he did eat a rat, though i never saw it because it was one that was left in his cage. but after that, he never did it again. normally i would say forget it. his mice are cheap and i dont have a bunch of animals to feed. but i dont want this to negatively affect his health. right now, he is putting away 5 mice every two weeks (2 one week and 3 the next) and i am about to have to boost it up to 3 a week here pretty soon because they just arent cutting it for him. is eating that amount of mice at once going to hurt him? and what happens if he never eats rats?

also, i have him and my female in separate but completely equal tanks. i use cage carpet, their temps are perfect and very closely monitored with a thermostat for the under tank heater and timer on the heat lamp, but i have YET to get a good shed out of him (and like i said before, he is 1 1/2 years old, thats a LOT of sheds!). EVERY shed comes off in pieces, over several days. sometimes i even have to help him by putting him in a tub of warm water and gently rubbing the skin off after its loosened. the only thing that has never caused a problem were his eye caps. my female just had her first shed and it was PERFECT and all in one piece. are some snakes just prone to bad sheds? i used to really worry about it in the past, and did everything you could think of in his cage to keep the humidity perfect, but nothing has worked. when the vet saw him, he had bits of shed on him and the vet said that he wasnt worried about it, that it would come off and it was normal, but then i get on here and everyone talks about their perfect shed and i just want him to have ONE good one. (at one point, i was so worried about the low humidity, that i even bought a humidifier with a tube that attached to the tank when the hydrometer told it to, but gave up when even that did not help his sheds). he is handled regularly except for when i notice his scales change color getting ready for a shed. then i leave him alone.

sigh, i feel like i am missing some trick of the trade.

[dr del]

Hi,

I wouldn't worry if he only wants mice as long as he is eating multiple at one sitting.

Plenty of us have a "mouser" and they do fine.

As for the sheds some do seem to need a higher humidity than others to shed - you could try lightly misting the substrate ( not the snake ) when you see he is in blue. I generally don't worry if it comes off in bits rather than as a complete shed as long as it comes off.