Quote Originally Posted by Quacking-Terror View Post
I just adopted a 7 week old BP today and he is a little smaller than Mitch, I believe. He has been eating fuzzies, live ones. I will be trying to get him to eat f/t, and I have been reading somewhere that letting them go a week without a meal before attempting to feed f/t from live is one method of trying to teach them to make the switch. I'm wondering if they are, like some animals, easier to "train" the younger they are.
For the record, I really do find that they are much, much easier to switch to f/t as hatchlings. A two or three year old adult can take MONTHS, but babies rarely take more than two weeks of effort.

...I wouldn't starve them a week at that age, though. They SHOULD be naturally hungry as hatchlings, but in any case they don't have a lot of body fat yet to buffer starvation.

My usual method, when they won't just take the f/t outright, is to "lead" with a live mouse, and then offer the f/t as soon as they're done swallowing--they usually will look around for second mouse immediately after the first one, and I find they're typically not as picky once they've had their "appetizer". It also helps if you warm up the nose of the f/t mouse for 30-60 seconds under a heat lamp, or with a hair dryer.