Teaching an old dog new tricks?

[Damian.foreman]

Alright. So to lay the story, I met a guy at a local pet store who was looking for someone to take care of his male normal BP, Leonidas. He's gonna be moving around and couldn't hold on to him anytime soon, so I offered to take care of Leonidas. Leonidas never had a problem with mites or RI and I was told he was pounding adult mice, therefore my assumption was that Leonidas was a couple of months old.

The owner and I met a couple of days later, yesterday, so I could pick him up. It was then that I realize something was up. I was then told that he was roughly three years old! The owner was super cool about everything and threw in the remaining frozen mice. He looked a little bit on the small size at first so I went ahead and took him home to weigh him and all.

I placed him on the scale and he's coming in at 639g and the last time he ate was last Saturday. So I figured to try my hand and got a small, all white rat and also covered him in mice bedding. Within 20 seconds of the rat being in the enclosure, he had a heavy strike and coiled tightly. But 30 minutes later, he let it go and was moving around happily! But he never went back to it. Fortunately, I also bought two adult mice and let me tell you all. As soon as he saw them, he struck both mice on the nose and downed them in 3 minutes each.

I'm assuming he's up for rats. What do y'all think? Have y'all had any success with switching mice to rats with the older BP?

[Stewart_Reptiles]

I have been successful but it takes tough love and a lot of perseverance, and usually it's easier with female.

It's about the scent mice are a lot more enticing so trying to fool you BP into taking a rat will likely require to scent the rat, so getting some dirty mice bedding will be a good idea and of course PATIENCE

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