My BP has been eating 2 mice at each feeding for over 2 years and is very healthy. I would like to change over to a single rat per feeding but everytime I go to the pet store all they have are medium large to large ones and they are bigger round then he is. Plus, I dont want to put a live one in (like I do my mice) for the fear of the rat being very aggressive and hurting my BP. So far, my BP has refused anything except live. The only good thing about killing a rat and then Monty not eating it is that now that Andariel is here with Sprocket, I could toss it in his cage and not worry about wasting a rat. So... I think I just talked myself into giving it some more tries. Will just have to keep mice on hand incase he refuses the rat.