unsure

So for some reason my bp refuses amy rats but will take mice. So should I just keep feeding her mice, or keep trying rats until she takes? She was taking rats for the longest time but then she stopped eating. Tried everything for two months strait with no success. Then tried a mouse, and she took. Did mice for three weeks, and back to a rat that she refused. So since then she has refuted rats and only take mice. I give her two mice in a weeks time.

Because of their scent mice are usually more appealing than rats and you you decide to change prey type you are taking the risk that our animal will not switch back or not before a very long time, which is why you should not switch prey unless you are willing to continue to feed that type of prey long term or even permanently.

You can try to switch back to rat but it may take weeks months or more and it will require tough love, which requires a good body weight.

Have you tried f/t and live both? My Black Widow male used to eat f/t rat pinks when he was tiny along with f/t mice, then was eating just mice, and when I tried to offer him a f/t rat he wouldn't have anything to do with it. Put a live rat hopper in his cage and he was all over it immediately, after three weeks of not eating while I tried to get him to take a f/t rat. Only one so far - that was last feeding, so I don't know if now that he's taken a live rat, he'll take f/t rats as well.

Once I get them on rats, they are never offered mice again. Two months without feeding in the winter time is nothing more than a BP starting to think about a hunger strike. An underweight snake would be the only exception.

She was losing weight. Went from 500g to 460g. But my question I was trying to get at which I clearly didn't state on the first one is, can she live a long and healthy life just on mice or do I need to get her back on rats?

F/T it's what I have always feed her.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by lorenhavens

F/T it's what I have always feed her.

---

That's great! Nutrition is nutrition in whatever form mice or rats. As long as the animal is feeding is the real goal. Switching is a process, and it may take a long time but you have to be prepared for failure along the way. Have you tried pre- killed? That may be a option as sometime the intermediate food presentation of freshly pre-killed prey may help. :cool:

They will do fine on mice alone however your pocket may not. Be prepared to feed a full grown adult around four mice a feeding. Deborah hit the nail on the head. Tough love is required. I wait mine out. There are many threads about converting prey items. The one I have had the most success with is thawing a mouse and a rat together. The rat ends up smelling a little like a mouse. After a few feedings you can stop with the mouse trick.

+1 to Dan. I have heard people having good success with scenting the rat with mouse bedding or even a mouse itself. Yes it can live off mice alone but when she gets really big you are going to have to be feeding 4+ mice in a sitting instead of 1 large prey item. The only time any of my animals gets a mouse is when I don't have a rat small enough on feeding day. (and that is for my young babies I recently got) Good luck!! :gj:

Try scenting first. Keep a live mouse around for a while and scent with the live mouses bedding.

or you could try

I had a friend with a Burmese Python that refused to eat anything but jumbo live rats. He had to feed six jumbo rats every couple weeks just to keep the snakes weight up so this is what he did. He cut the hide off of a frozen thawed rat and draped it (stuck it) to the back of a very young rabbit. He did this several times and each time putting a smaller hide on the baby bunny. Once he got the snake to take a bunny without a rat skin, he started slowly sizing the rabbits up. The snake now eats rabbits no problem. He will only take them live tho :(. You could try the same trick with a mouse hide on a baby rat about the same size as a mouse?

I would never want a mouser. Expensive and I dislike mice very much. All of my balls only get rats, straight out of the eggs.