Quote Originally Posted by BPelizabeth View Post
Here is what he has been doing......first of all he will not bite and coil lately. We have to pre-kill it and lay it in his tub. Then after about 20 minutes he has to lay on it....rub on it...."love" on it for a while. Eventually he will finally eat it. Yesterday he layed his head on it for 30 minutes before he finally ate it.
If he is actually eventually eating the rat then IMO there is no problem. I have 3 females of varying sizes (one is also a proven breeder) that eat best if I simply leave a f/t rat in the enclosure with them overnight. They have all also taken live, but their best response is with the f/t left for them with no wiggling or anything like that because they seem to know it is dead and usually don't strike and coil. One of them will usually go ahead and start eating while I am still in the room and feeding the others, one ignores the rat completely until some time after I leave, and one acts similar to your male and rubs on the rat, pokes it, lays on it, etc. until at some point she finally decides she is ready to eat it. It is actually MUCH easier to feed these girls than some of my other snakes--lay the rat in the tub and check the next morning to make sure it's gone.