success!!

[latazyo]

after reading everyone's posts on here I was pretty nervous about feeding my ball a rat today, but he hammered the rat like it was his job

he even ate it off of the feeding tongs (last time I tried to feed her with tongs, she was scared and didn't eat the mouse until I just dropped it in with her)

wow, I'm pumped

[BoidKeeper]

Congrats,
Trevor

[crazyboy]

good job.

[mykee]

Neat, now if she does that a couple thousand more times, you're set!

[Bartman]

what did you do to switch her over? Id really love to know lol, mine only eats mice, and its become an expensive issue.

[latazyo]

I didn't do anything, I got the snake from alex hue about a month ago and I first fed it on march 24th (about a week after I got it)

at the time, Petco didn't have any rats that were small enough (it's a late 03 baby) so I went with a large mouse that time

this time I went to the other pet store in town and he had small rats there, so I got one

when I know I'm going to feed (I usually feed around 1230am) I put the frozen morsels in a tupperware in the fridge...
fearing that the ball might not eat it, I put the rat in a tupperware with a fuzzy mouse and a pinky mouse (feed for my corn and king) because I thought they might leak mouse smell onto the rat (but then I also thought the rat would leak smell onto the mice, causing my corn and king not to eat them)

so I put a fuzzy mouse and pinky mouse alone in another container

when feeding time comes, I take the thawed rodents out of the fridge, drain the cold *** water and then refil the containers with water as hot as I can get it from the sink and let it sit for about 15 minutes

last time I tried to feed the ball a mouse with tongs it was frightened and rolled up, so I just laid the mouse in the feeding container and no more than 10 seconds later the snake hit it and wrapped and ate it

this time the snake did not ball up and hit the rat straight off of the tongs and ate it

the corn and king each ate both of their mice too, including the ones that thawed in the same container as the rat, so the experiment worked

next time I will try a rat that soaked with nothing else, hopefully the ball will eat that too and hopefully once my mouse stock is out, my king will be big enough for rat pinks and I can get all 3 of my snakes onto rats

[nita]

Congratulations!! Always great when they eat. My newest baby eats right off the tongs. When I put it in the feeding container it knows dinner is coming and peeks up over the edge as soon as I lower the food towards it, it nails it and takes it down into the bottom of the feeding container. Love adoptions like that!!

[elevation24]

Congrats :)