Welcome to BPNet Barry, glad you've joined us here and congrats to you and your wife on acquiring a lovely Ball Python for a pet.

If you wish to transfer Julius over to f/t prey I'd advise letting him settle in and eat as he wishes (live I assume) for a few weeks before you disturb that pattern of good eating. Sometimes it's best to go from live to pre-killed then to frozen/thawed if that is your end goal rather than go straight from live to frozen/thawed...in the end it's really up to you which way you want to go. It's also up to the snake as to what it will take...some are pretty specific about how and what they will eat....others are not.

If you don't have a set of tongs or hemostats or long tweezers to feed non-live prey with I'd suggest you run out and get some. Feeding from your hands is never a good idea. If you are using pre-killed, simply humanely kill it and offer it immediately on the tongs while it retains it's body temp. If frozen/thawed - warm it well especially the head and belly area and offer it. Some snakes will need you to "dance" the prey a bit (aka "rat zombie dance" "the dead rat boogie") to simulate life and trigger a strike response - some won't care or even may be put off a bit if you do that. We found when we fed f/t that starting a bit back from the snake and "walking" the warmed prey (by grasping the loose scruff skin) across the substrate worked better than danging it by the tail or wiggling it too aggressively near the snake's face.

Course some of our really aggressive feeders wouldn't have cared less how the f/t prey was offered as they snatch it right off the hemostats before we had much chance to do anything much but crack open the tub LOL.