Good size Rat??

[basuca]

Is these a good size rat for my ball?
another Q I have, is that she dosent whant to eat, she have been with out feeding for 3 weeks now and dont what to eat anything. The last thing she eat was a gerbal.

[Smynx]

From what I can tell, that looks like a pretty good sized rat for your snake. The snake will be the ultimate judge, though. If it doesn't want a rat, try a gerbil again.

[Adam_Wysocki]

I feed snakes that size rats half of the size of the one pictured.

Having fed your snake a gerbil, it might be very difficult to get it to now take any other rodent.

-adam

[_BoidFinatic_]

All of my balls feed great out of a hide. you can get a half-log type hide and the BP sits in there and when the rodents sticks its head in or passes by, the BP will get it really quickly. Mine prefer to eat out of the hide. try it.

[frankykeno]

We feed live rats and just a thought, that rat looks a tad on the larger side for that snake. We find with live feeding that it makes for a faster, more efficient kill and less worry over the prey fighting back if the prey item isn't on the large size for the snake to handle it well. Also our snakes eat more consistently week to week if they aren't stuffed too full with a larger prey item.

Perhaps a slightly smaller rat and since the snake took a gerbil before maybe letting the rat run around first in some used gerbil bedding to pick up their scent might help. I've never personally tried this method but have seen some success that people have said they had doing this when switching prey types.

We did use a hopper gerbil to trigger our WC bp to eat but offered a wean rat immediately afterward so she never imprinted on the gerbil and took rats thereafter until her current winter fast.


~~Jo~~

[ARamos8]

that's kind of on the "too big" side for my taste. Looks like you gave her "Rodent Caviar". I made that mistake once (in haste), never made it again. LOL

Check your husbandry (setup) and make sure all is good to go. Last resort, get some more Rodent Caviar and give that a go, first give her a break (24hrs.)....Good luck...