from mice to rat.

[revent]

My jungle carpet python aurora is about a year and a half old. For about the last five months or so I've been trying really hard to get her to eat rats instead of mice. The only way I have managed to be successful is to more or less gut a mouse and get the rat covered in mouse blood, and even then she is super suspicious of it and takes forever to decide to eat it, where as when I fed her mice she jumped on them almost before I put it in her cage.

I've tried braining the rats, flavoring with chicken broth, just rubbing them with mice and even super heating them. I've left her alone with em all night and she just doesn't want nothing to do with em.

So my question is what should I do? Should I just try to starve her into eating themaybe not feed her for a couple of months and then offer? ( I've tried it for a couple of weeks but just gave up and mouse blood scented on for her) should I just continue scenting with mouse blood? Or should I just give up and let her be a mouser.

[shaunyboy]

heat a rat and a mouse,burst the mouse and rub blood and guts all over the rat,then brain the rat and give it another quick heat then offer to the snake

pretty much what you already did to get her to take them.....

then once shes taking heavily scented rats,put a little less scent on them every 3rd or 4th week...

until she takes them with very little scent,then eventually unscented

it took me 4 month of heavily scenting rats with mice,to get my female Diamond crossed over from the mice to rats

i offered her rats every 10 to 14 days,until she started taking them heavily scented,once she took them every time i offered,i then fed her weekly


cheers shaun

[franks]

The "cleanest" way to do this is to buy a few frozen hopper mice. Put one in a zip lock bag, simply break it in half while frozen, throw the rat in the same bag, and allow to defrost. Good luck! Keep at it- trust me it's worth the hassle.

[Zelg]

Originally Posted by revent

My jungle carpet python aurora is about a year and a half old. For about the last five months or so I've been trying really hard to get her to eat rats instead of mice. The only way I have managed to be successful is to more or less gut a mouse and get the rat covered in mouse blood, and even then she is super suspicious of it and takes forever to decide to eat it, where as when I fed her mice she jumped on them almost before I put it in her cage.

I've tried braining the rats, flavoring with chicken broth, just rubbing them with mice and even super heating them. I've left her alone with em all night and she just doesn't want nothing to do with em.

So my question is what should I do? Should I just try to starve her into eating themaybe not feed her for a couple of months and then offer? ( I've tried it for a couple of weeks but just gave up and mouse blood scented on for her) should I just continue scenting with mouse blood? Or should I just give up and let her be a mouser.

Hi, just wanted to add my experience. Disclaimer: I dont know what I'm talking about so take it with a grain of salt. I also have a ball instead but either way, I always like hearing varied inputs on my questions. Here goes...

I was feeding my ball mice up until a couple months ago. (hes about a year old now i believe) I decided it was time to feed him bigger prey, ( I feed live as well so this could have been an assistance in the change over). I got him a rat and tossed it in and he went after it right away and stuffed it down in a hurry. I was thrilled.

Well about 10 days go buy and I go to feed him again and he refuses. He ended up refusing for the next like 6 weeks. I even offered a mouse at week 4. I skipped 5 and on 6 I tossed in a small rat and he gobbled it down and has been eating pretty steadily since.

As for the advice above...that sounds terribly disgusting but I somehow feel 100% certain that it works well.

[MyKuLoO]

I blood scented rats with mice but she still didn't take them. What is the actual benefit of rats over mice? I live feed because she also tends to refuse freshly killed (like literally 10 seconds before feeding).

[EL Ziggy]

The biggest advantages of rats over mice to me is cost and convenience. I'd rather feed 1 small (90g) rat @ $1.15 as opposed to 3-4 (20-30g) large mice @ .70 each (using Big Cheese weights and prices). I'm having a tough time getting my kings on rats but my bulls switched with no issues.

[millertime89]

Originally Posted by EL-Ziggy

The biggest advantages of rats over mice to me is cost and convenience. I'd rather feed 1 small (90g) rat @ $1.15 as opposed to 3-4 (20-30g) large mice @ .70 each (using Big Cheese weights and prices). I'm having a tough time getting my kings on rats but my bulls switched with no issues.

This x1000