I have had no issues with feeding frozen-thawed rats to my pythons, once I started using the blowdryer to heat them up before feeding. HOWEVER... these all have been snakes I raised from hatchling or juvenile age. I recently bought 6 proven adult breeders. 2 of them have been eating the dead rats. The other 4 have shown almost zero interest. At first I thought, they just needed time to acclimate to their new habitat. (new terrarium). It has been 5 weeks, and still they show no interest in eating. All my other ball pythons take the dead rats and eat them like candy, rarely refusing. Some of them NEVER refuse.

So my question is, is it possibly that because these adult ball pythons were fed live rodents by their breeders, (eating live rats their entire lives), is it even possible for me to get them to take a dead rat? Or should I just surrender, and give in to feeding them live?