My Mousers and Frustrations

Ok i got a few mousers in my collection. i know it can be frustrating for alotta keepers to transition their snakes to f/t prey. It can also be very maddening to transition snakes from mice to rats. These are mousers.

first, my GHI Mojave boy refuses rats (and any f/t prey). he’s been this way forever. so he currently eats 2-3 live adult mice per week. he’s about a year old, 537grams right now and growing slower than his brother/clutchmate. his brother is a regular Mojave that is approaching 800grams and is on f/t rats.

second, my Clown boy prefers mice. he will strike and constrict a rat but only swallows it maybe 20% of the time. he will eat a mouse (live or f/t) 100% always unless he is in shed.

Lastly, my Albino Super Mojave girl went on a 5 week fast and when she came out of it, will only eat mice. actually, I take that back. She has only taken 1 rat for me right before her fast. then she probably decided that she didn’t like the taste of rats. And so her last 5 feeding sessions have been two 25-30gram f/t mice. i’m glad she’s eating again, but i want her growing up on rats. also she will only eat twice in once sitting before getting tired and retreating to her hide.

Anyway those are my mousers. Do you have snakes that will only eat mice? anyone have tips to transition picky eaters to rats?

I have an enchi I hatched out that was refusing to switch for the longest time. I finally left a rat pup in a small critter keeper with a mouse and some soiled bedding for an hour before offering it. I also scented the room so he was ready to hit immediately when the tub opened.

Oh and you think that's bad, my female baby rescue retic decided she was going to be stuck on LIVE mice for a long time. :O She finally took a live rat a few weeks ago. Now to get her onto f/t.

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Originally Posted by bcr229

I have an enchi I hatched out that was refusing to switch for the longest time. I finally left a rat pup in a small critter keeper with a mouse and some soiled bedding for an hour before offering it. I also scented the room so he was ready to hit immediately when the tub opened.

Oh and you think that's bad, my female baby rescue retic decided she was going to be stuck on LIVE mice for a long time. :O She finally took a live rat a few weeks ago. Now to get her onto f/t.

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thanks!

also lol - Retics on mice. at least she is a baby Retic. i'm also reminded of your adult Retic that went into surgery and had to be fed mice afterwards during the heal. like eating popcorn chicken. :rofl:

Our albino spider female was a strict mouser for about 18 months. Tried scenting the rat, scenting the cage and room. Tried live and f/t with no luck. She was so bad that not only did she not eat the rat scented by mice, she then refused the mouse used to scent the rat. Then all of the sudden one day I decided to throw a live rat in there because I had purchased one of another snake but failed to notice he was in blue. She not only took it, she shot out of her hide, chased it down and devoured it. That was in late June and she has eaten like that ever since.

The only change that can be attributed to it was I moved her from a smaller enclosure to the new cage system that I built which was considerably larger. Other than that, temp and humidity was identical, photo cycle is identical, traffic in the room is identical.

Who knows, maybe sometimes you just need to shake things up a little.

Didn't until this season one of my holdback like mice but eventually she will switch all my animals have in the past even if some took longer than others.

The key is PATIENCE and tough love even if that put a dent in your breeding projects.

I once used mice to try to coax my bp out of a fast, and he got hooked on them. I let him eat mice for awhile until he was back up to weight, he refused a rat, so I gave him more time and tried another rat. By this point in time, he'd been eating mice for about a year, and not only refused the next rat but then refused to eat f/t or live mice for 3 months and lost 13% of his weight in that short amount of time. Hadn't even lost that much when he fasted for 8-9 months. When he was down to almost 1,100 grams he finally took some live mice and f/t mice shortly after. It took him 8+ months to almost get back up to weight because instead of his usual 3-4 jumbo mice he'd only eat 1 or 2. When he hit 1,300 grams I tried him on a medium rat, just to see if I could get him switched, and he took it! All I had to do was heat it really hot and he took it without any hesitation. Grrr. I ordered small rats soon after that and he's been eating rats since.

Sometimes they're a pain to switch, sometimes all of a sudden one day they switch if any of the responses in this thread is something to go off of. haha

Its good to see this thread - since my bp has decided mice suiter better than rats.

My only live eater is also a mouser. 1700g pied, somehow she put on about 600g this year just having 3-4 mice a week and most of them weren't even adult size! When I got her she'd take live rats and I offer her them weekly but she doesn't even look at them even being scented. But lately everything has been confusing about her. I was pretty positive she ovulated and had a prelay shed right on schedule but she's not hugging the heat and went back to eating so guess not. Still hoping she surprises me with eggs one morning soon!

My normal rescue is a mouser. He had only ever been fed on live (and the crappy skinny Petco live ones at that), and the previous owner didn't feed him often enough.. After three years of living with the former owner he was still only 500 g when I got him. Since getting him in May he has put on over 200 g and is eating rather well. I was able to transition him to frozen thawed, however he absolutely refuses both live and frozen rats. He will turn his nose up and refuse rats, but as soon as I remove the rat and put in a mouse, he is on it like stink on doodoo.

Since he is a male, I suppose I should be able to keep him on mice the rest of his life if I have to right? The FT mice he is eating or about 30 g, and this week I'm going to try and get two of them in him. When he was on life, sometimes he would eat one sometimes two mice. The pain for me was keeping a tank ready to keep the mice alive, watered, fed and exercised if he refused the 2nd mouse.

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Originally Posted by HannahLou

My only live eater is also a mouser. 1700g pied, somehow she put on about 600g this year just having 3-4 mice a week and most of them weren't even adult size! When I got her she'd take live rats and I offer her them weekly but she doesn't even look at them even being scented. But lately everything has been confusing about her. I was pretty positive she ovulated and had a prelay shed right on schedule but she's not hugging the heat and went back to eating so guess not. Still hoping she surprises me with eggs one morning soon!

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When you are feeding your mouser multiple mice are you feeding her all four in one session? Or multiple sessions?

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Originally Posted by Captainsloose

When you are feeding your mouser multiple mice are you feeding her all four in one session? Or multiple sessions?

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my GHI Mojave mouser boy who only eats live will eat 2-3 live mice in a feeding session but will probably eat 4 or more if i let him. my BP's that are on live just have a different feeding response when it comes to live prey. the kill is almost instant.

my Clown and Albino Super Mojave will eat a max of 2 f/t mice before they become uninterested. i will be planning on feeding them multiple times a week as they grow if this is still the case. :/

I put my picky-would only eat 1 at a time-losing weight-mouser on african soft furs instead. She has been gaining weight steadily on them since the switch. Hasn't refused one ever either.

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Originally Posted by Captainsloose

When you are feeding your mouser multiple mice are you feeding her all four in one session? Or multiple sessions?

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One session so it's more like getting 1 small rat after they're all in there. I don't put multiple live in her drawer at once. Just give her one, wait a few minutes til it's down, another then wait for it to go down..

I'm so stoked. My picky mouser wouldn't take his FT from me even though he was interested, so I put him back in his hide and stuck the heads of the mice inside the entrance. An hour later they were long gone. They were larger FT so total they were 50g

I'm going to get another box of small FT rats from petco to see if he will take a rat that way. If so, I'll buy rats at the next reptile show. For now though I have about 40 XL mice left from the last show.

I prefer to use live rat pups instead of mice, my live only snakes will take either but the mice are just too dangerous in my opinion. A rat pup will get bigger than a jumbo adult mouse before he even opens his eyes. They are totally safe to leave in unattended with the snake. My snakes usually take them right away but sometimes I leave them in the closed up tub for about an hour with the snake, I'd never do that with an adult mouse, just too dangerous for the snake. I think some snakes don't like to be watched when they feed. I have one in particular that just doesn't like me very much and just watching her feed is enough to distract her to the point where she won't feed. But if I drop in a rat pup and close the tub she will always eat. The trick is raising enough rat pups of the right age to always have pups available for all my snakes. I only feed live mice to my breeder females to keep them fat and happy and only if I'm short on rat pups.