First shot @ F/T.....

Well I tried switching from live adult mice to f/t rat pups.....ended up 1 for 2 :banana: not bad for the first try. :please: hopefully next week will be a complete success!

Good luck. Ive heard several cases where people had a really hard time getting their BP to switch from live to f/t. Im really lucky because thats what mine was started out on so ive never had a problem with him taking a f/t. If you havnt already tried it, you should prescent the room with the f/t. That might help some. Another thing is to gently shake the rat pup with the feeding tongs. It will make your BP think its alive. Thats what I have to do when I feed mine or he wont strike. Has to have that movement. I wish you the best of luck.

I tired the same a few weeks back and was 0 for 3. You may want to try live rat pups first then switch to f/t. You have 2 things going against you in switching from mice to rats and from live to f/t.

Next week I'm going to try prescenting and if that doesn't work i'll go with a live rat pup

One of my BP's was a live feeder when I got it and has now been converted to F/T but we just switched it from live to f/t mice. Maybe start with mice first? Just a thought. Riley was easy enough to convert once I learned the "rat dance" lol But I had a couple aggravating weeks until I figured out what was going on and what to do.

I must be one of the lucky ones, all 5 of my ball pythons converted to f/t no problem. Even the year old female i picked up that had only eaten live. I found that if i could not get them to hit it doing the rat dance i would just drop it ontop of a hide or somewhere and they would end up getting around to it, since they would seem interested just not strike and it has worked for me!! Now my RTB on the other hand is still a work in progress!!

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Originally Posted by Sparky1

I must be one of the lucky ones, all 5 of my ball pythons converted to f/t no problem. Even the year old female i picked up that had only eaten live. I found that if i could not get them to hit it doing the rat dance i would just drop it ontop of a hide or somewhere and they would end up getting around to it, since they would seem interested just not strike and it has worked for me!! Now my RTB on the other hand is still a work in progress!!

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This thread was quite helpful for me, as I will soon be switching mine from live to f/t rat fuzzies. Thanks for posting your comments, and thanks to everybody who responded with tips! :)

I have three ball pythons, all of whom now eat frozen thawed. One of them had only eaten frozen thawed when I got her, but the other two are a different story. My female switched over with no problem, but she had an amazing feeding response from the beginning. My pastel male, however, is still a bit picky, and he used to somtimes miss a meal. He always ate the frozen thawed mouse the next week though, and he has been steadily getting better. I feed in a separate, prescented container so they theoretically always know that said container = food. Also, it seemed to help convince him to take the mouse when I dangled it by the scruff of its neck rather than by its tail (can't remember where I read that tip but it seemed to help him out).

My pastel (the one who didn't eat) was a picky feeder when I got him also, took me a good 3 weeks to get him eating. I'm not too worried though it was just the first try.