odd eating patterns

[takagari]

My male BP who I have had for over a year now went on a hunger strike after x-mas (end of jan to be more exact)

and never ate since then.

He escaped a few weeks back and was gone for 3 weeks, I found him last week and he had shed and was doing fine,

We had some rats give birth so I thought I would try him on something small and see if he would touch it.

I dropped in two 1 week old live rats, and he attacked but then dropped the one (still alive) and went after the other.

than dropped it and went after the other

he is now working on eating the second one he attacked,

Is this behavior because he wanted to ansure his prey wouldn't take off? that he felt the second one in there.

In after thought I should have only dropped one in. but too late now.

Thoughts on this behavior?

[blackcrystal22]

Well first of all..
Feeding too small of prey can be dangerous, so these week old rats sound a bit too small.
Something that looks like a snack to them shouldn't be fed to them. If he were eating more than one of them at a time, it would make things better but you should still stick to the rule of thumb: use prey the same size as the thickest point on the snake.
When you give too small of prey, it actually takes more energy to digest then it receives from the small amount of food.

As for the reaction to the prey, he may not know what to do with such small prey, but it could also be that he is discouraged to eat it because of it's size. Is he used to feeding on rats?

[takagari]

yes he is a rat eater

he has now eatin both of them

I was worried about to small, but he hadnt eaten in 9 months.. and I was worried about feeding to much the frist go. i figured this would wake his system up and tomorrow would feed him full size.

[SnakesvsRodents]

also.. next time dont drop them both in at once.. wait until the first has gone down before offering another.

[Argentra]

You did right offering something a bit smaller than normal just to get him going again, especially since you offered two smalls. However, next time only drop in ONE at a time.