Ok, first after listing to the advice here, I decided to continue with the live feeding instead of trying to switch to f/t. The local pet store sell f/t and live for the same price. But now I have some questions about feeding live.

1. What weight (of the snake) is it good to go from mice to rats?

2. I attempted to feed a small rat to each of my balls last night, my female hit almost right away and it took her a few moments to figure out how to get it in her belly but she made it with little to no struggle. But my male seemed almost afraid of the rat, it at first watched it like it was going to strike it, but after a while when the rat finally came close enough our male just shot his head away and then never really regained his composer. I left the rat in the for about another 20 minutes (under supervision) and finally decided to just put the rat away and save it for next weeks feeding of my female. So I am planning on taking him back down to a mouse or two a week until he gets a little bigger. Is this the course of action you would take?

3. How do you feed live? Just drop the animal in the tank and watch or do you use feeding tongs? and what is recommended?

Ok sorry if there is any bad grammar or spelling in this or if it just doesn't make sense. I am very tired got like 2 hours of sleep and kind of typing off of instinct what ever comes to my head.