To strike or not to strike..

[humpee316]

Some of you might remember i posted about my juvi female BP refusing to feed on small rats.well after recieving some great advice.im disapointed ta say that she STILL refuses to eat them.I tried everything suggested exept live.the reason im hesitant is that when presented a ft rat she shows obvious fear,like heads right for her hide and stays there.be assured that i do a slight dead mouse dance nothing to startle her.So then i grab a mouse,thaw it,warm it, dangle it in tank,out comes jazz sniffs it,no strike,stares at it,i drop it in front of her,walk away and seconds later she begins to eat it.This has been the way she chooses to feed.and has been doing it this way for months.Is this normal,and at her size she will polish off 2 sometimes 3 full grown mice every 5 to7 days..should i continue mice or do i try a live small rat?it would certainly be a less expensive solution if she would take 1 rat a week ....any thoughts would be appreciated..she is 15 months old 35.5 inches and 750 grams,sound like a normal sized female for her age?SOS

[ballpythonluvr]

I have a four month old male BP that does not strike when I feed him f/t mice. I do the little dance but he never strikes. I just lay the mouse in front of his hide and then leave. When I come back, the mouse is gone. You can try offering a smaller then normal size rat for your snake and see if that will work. Sometimes a snake is intimidated by the size of a rat.

[Adam Chandler]

Whenever I'm trying to get a mouse eater to start eating rats I usually try a large crawler rat or a small weaned rat since they are a similar size to an adult mouse. I do this because as python1024 said the size of the rat can intimate your BP.

I only feed live so I don't know any f/t tricks but when I try to make this switch I leave the crawler/weaned rat in a container with a mouse for a little while to get the scent of the mouse on the rat. Once your BP takes a crawler/weaned rat the hard part is over, you just increase the size of the rat every week a little bit until you get the desired size. I've had an almost 100% success rate with this method. My only failure is my male Killer Bee that will only eat hopper mice>< I have not given up on him yet, one day he will eat rats!