Old male switching from live to f/t

[maverickgtr]

Well we have a 10 year old male that [used to] only likes live white mice. Well, last feed he finally took a slightly undersized rat for the first time in about 8 years. When my boyfriend first got him he tried feeding him f/t mice and rats but he always refused and never showed even the remotest interest.

Well, where we live now, live mice are very hard to find and are quite expensive when you do find them. We have a female that readily takes f/t rats and we have a large supply at hand. I know younger snakes are easier to switch from live to f/t, but has anyone had experience switching an older snake over? We have to thaw one out for our female this weekend so we figured we might try offering it at least to our male first. Should we give it a shot or should we wait to see if he'll take another live rat? Is it going to stress him out? He's always been more easily stressed out than our female, but she's just weird because she couldn't care less about anything. haha

[Jasnik]

I am certainly no expert and have had my ball python for a year now. He/she is about 10years also. This is how I got my snake to eat ft, after a four month fast too. After several attempts on regular feeding days of live rat being refused. I decided to offer live adult mice, still a no go, he just wasnt interested. Since the mice are smaller and less threatening I felt better about leaving it the tank longer, supervised of course. One time the mouse and snake were actually snuggled up together, I was getting pretty frustrated at this point. One day he we dropped the live mouse in, he ignored it for about half hour, then I think he got fed up with it making itself at home in his hide, so he ate it. At last he was eating again, so after all this hassle I decided thats it, frozen. After a couple of successful feeds with a live mouse, I tricked him and gave 1 live mouse as a starter, followed by a small ft rat. SUCCESS!! Did this for a couple more feeds, then tried ft only and we have been completely ft ever since.

Good luck with yours.

[maverickgtr]

We got him to eat a f/t rat today! I was [still am] so excited! This is so much easier and makes me worry less because now I don't have to worry about him getting hurt by a rat during feedings!

[Jasnik]

thats great congrats :-) And you can bulk buy for less its win win.