You may want to try him on a mouse. We have a male that will just not take a rat regardless. The breeder we got him from only fed mice. We also have a nice size girl that was doing fine with rats and then one day all of the sudden stopped eating for 6 months. We decided to give a mouse a try and she has taken mice every single time since then, but will not touch a rat again. Then we have our goofy girl who will only eat white rats. If the rat is more than around 25% some color other than white she will not touch it. Generally Ball pythons are not as hard as most say to get to eat. You just have to figure out what works and go with it.