Hey guys! It's been a while since my last post, but this news was too exciting not to share, and hopefully parts of this will be helpful to people switching to rats for the first time...
Huxley the bp ate his first rat with me today! It was somewhat of an uphill battle (though not nearly as hard as I thought it would be)...I'd offered him f/t before, but he just didn't seem interested. I couldn't buy appropriate-sized frozen rat weanlings for him online since the shipping costs were prohibitive for something that I didn't even know if he would eat, and the smallest rats stocked by the reptile store near me were still pretty darn big, compared to Hux's size.
So for the past month, I'd upped his feeding frequency with adult mice to once every four days (which I'm sure I should have been doing before...) to help him gain some girth. I tried a frozen rat last night, but it was either too big or he just didn't recognize it as food, and he didn't go for it.
So today, I went to the reptile store for more mice and another rat, but decided on the spur of the moment to have them prekill one of the smaller of their live feeder rats. I brought it home, along with two frozen mice, in case the rat failed. I offered the rat, and Huxley didn't seem interested, even though it was bleeding a little bit from being hit at the store.
Then I remembered all the advice that I'd heard about switching to rats, and I got one of the frozen mice, and rubbed it all over the rat. I cut off some of its fur, and put clumps of it on the rat's head, where I knew Huxley would flick his tongue. Then I offered again. He flicked at it, and after a minute became interested and got into strike position. A few minutes went by, and he wasn't striking, even though I was wiggling it. Then I tapped it against the side of his body a few times, and put it in front of his face. After doing this twice, he struck at quickly and coiled.
I left the room so as not to stress him out for his first rat, so I don't know how hard it was for him to swallow it, but he did swallow, and now he's got this big fat lump in his body! I'm hoping my second rat won't be as hard as the first. Sorry this was so long-winded, but I'm really, really excited that I've finally made the switch to rats.
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