All my animals eat f/t. My husband won't allow me to breed my own rodents (and I'm not thrilled about the extra work involved, anyway) so for me ordering vast quantities of f/t online has turned out to be far cheaper than buying individual f/t or live locally.

Sometimes it's work switching the animals. I've had animals that didn't eat for months after arriving, and then stopped eating randomly a few months later and had to go back on live. At some level, I just want to see these guys eat SOMETHING, anything. I had to leave my het lavender male on live for most of a year, and he regressed back from f/t several times before it finally stuck. And THEN he would only eat f/t MICE, and it's taken me another year to get him on rats...

But IF your animal arrives with an appetite, then this is a great time of year to switch. Most of my animals are eating voraciously right now, building up weight for the winter breeding season. I'm using that appetite to switch my mousers over to rats, and it's a good time for switching live eaters over f/t.

If your animal arrives and it won't eat? The main thing is finding something it actually does want to eat. If you have a picky eater, you might have to feed live all winter and wait until the appetite returns again before you can change the diet.