Please help! Flannery won't eat rats!

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Originally Posted by alexrls

really? i've never hear that before:confuzd:

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Here's a picture of one. They apparently have very little smell associated with them, and are becoming more available in the U.S. Many people are using them to feed WC Balls that haven't eaten in months, but they'll eat these things like candy. The problem is that they're pretty expensive and chances are you won't find them at your local pet store.

What I do when switching a snake from mice to rats is put a FT mouse in with the rats for awhile and then offer it to the snake. Works every time!

There's so many shinannigans you can pull to trick them into rats....one of them not mentioned so far is what usually works for me- skip feeding them for about 2 weeks and bump their temps up a degree on the warm end. They are usually hungry enough after that and will strike at ANYTHING resembling what they ate before, in this case a rat rather than the mouse they were waiting for.

That does work...elevatethis's...I forgot about that one.

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Originally Posted by xdeus

Here's a picture of one. They apparently have very little smell associated with them, and are becoming more available in the U.S. Many people are using them to feed WC Balls that haven't eaten in months, but they'll eat these things like candy. The problem is that they're pretty expensive and chances are you won't find them at your local pet store.

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Thats great info, I think I may forward that to a friend with a WC that simply refuses to eat...Shes had it for quite some time, so she may be interested in trying that, expensive or not.

We got a WC adult female to eat by keeping her in a really dark room, keeping her temps nice and toasty warm, putting her in a smaller than normal tub, no handling and very deep substrate so her hides were almost buried in it. Then we sort of "primed the pump" by putting a hopper sized gerbil in a container and setting it on the lid of her tub on the warm side for a good hour or so. Then we quickly put the hopper gerbil in and basically ran from the room LOL. She hit it like a freight train. We then backed it up right away with a very small rat, which she also took quickly. She didn't imprint on the gerbil though that was a risk to take but after not eating for better than 8 months and coming to us very underweight, it was a risk and expense we were willing to take on. She's never taken anything else since but rats for us and will now eat w/o us running away or the room being completely black. It's nice that nowadays we don't have to monitor her live feedings by sitting dead still with a dark t-shirt draped over a flashlight LOL

Credit to Adam Wysocki who helped us so much during those early and very worrisome days with Saorise. He walked us through a lot of the above ideas and was a godsend (especially the panicked..."omg Adam she must have 5 eyecaps stuck on her!" phone call) :)

Well when I try again next week, it will have been 2 weeks since she last ate, and she just shed, and it's been hotter here lately (so consequently the temps in her tank are a little higher too)- so hopefully that makes for a very hungry snake!

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Originally Posted by xdeus

Here's a picture of one. They apparently have very little smell associated with them, and are becoming more available in the U.S. Many people are using them to feed WC Balls that haven't eaten in months, but they'll eat these things like candy. The problem is that they're pretty expensive and chances are you won't find them at your local pet store.

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cool.

the downside to african rats are, they are expensive and if you get your ball to like them? well, you either have to pay out the ___ or breed african rats. they are also alot bigger than mice. people have been keeping balls successfully for a few decades without the african rats!


vaughn

O whatever Vaughn, you just don't want people feeding your new little pet to their snakes....! :)