I think he wants to eat my hand instead of the rat?!

Hi All,

I am new to the BP community (well 2 years in) and still have quite a lot to learn. I have switched all of my snakes (boas, balls, and king) to frozen to reduce costs. My ball pythons, specifically my pastel is being a little fussy. This past week I was dangling a thawed rat in front of him and it appeared that he was purposely avoiding the rat and kinda struck in the direction of the tongs/my hand. So, out of fright I dropped the rat. I picked it back up and he grabbed the rat and coiled...I thought he ate but the next day the rat was over in the corner. I am not sure what to do or what it means. Any advice would be much helpful :)

You may need to warm the rat's head up a little more.

First of all your hand is a much easier target, it's warm and big. They go for my hand even when I feed live. It does sound like it needs to be warmer since he didnt eat it.

I thought that would be a plausible reason, I will give that a try this next go round... :)

The overall rat should be warmer. He's seeing your hand as the food source because it's more the temp of a living prey. Try warming it uo more with a hair dryer.

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Originally Posted by Homegrownscales

The overall rat should be warmer. He's seeing your hand as the food source because it's more the temp of a living prey. Try warming it uo more with a hair dryer.

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Heat the rat up to 100F. That is a live rats natural body temp. I learned this from one of my boas. If I didn't get the rat hot enough, he would strike, constrict, and not eat. But, When I heated it up more, he would strike, constrict and eat. All I had to do was look up a rats natural body temp to give me a target temperature for heating up rats...

I feed with tongs for that reason. And I wear latex gloves as well, but that's just me. If going bare handed, just make sure your hand isn't too close to the snake's head. I hover the mice/rat a few inches above the head so that it can get a good strike. And so far it's been working great.

I too feed frozen/thawed and a hot pray is always better than a warm one, especially when feeding more than one snake at a time. I go thru 10 snakes and with some picky eaters or what ever distractions going on (my son loves being around me during feeding time) the temperature of that last mice/rat drops and its a bit counter productive if I have to keep re-heating after every snake. I usally run close to boiling water over them while they're in a ziplock bag. So my point is before I go on and on is heat the prey up to 100° f. close to the temp of boiling water. Just like Vypyrz said. Shouldn't have a problem after that.

its good to completely thaw the rodent at room temp and warm it either under a heat lamp or placed in a zipp lock bag and placed in hot water for a few minutes making sure the rodent doesnt get wet and lose any scent. be especialy careful the rodent doesnt begin to cook because snakes connot digest cooked food items. if the problem continues you could try getting some hamster or gerble liiter from a local pet store and put the frozen rodent in it to get the diff scent on the rat. Bps love gerbles and hamsters but tend to get picky and want the gerble or hamster scented food after that. you also could try exposing the brain a little. it sounds gross but it works.