Ready to Rumble

[bigsnakegirl785]

Originally Posted by EL Ziggy

@ TnB- The finicky carpet is growing much slower than my other regularly eating carpets did. She was 116g when I got her on 1/11/17. She was 177g today. That's a gain of 60g in the 5 months that I've had her. My coastal gained 420g in his first 5 months and my jungle gained 235g in his first 5 months with me. The olive has gained over 450g since January. He was 141g on arrival 1/4/17. He was 571g on 5/17. I'm sure he's somewhere around 650g now. Part of that is because he gets all the albino's refusals. She never takes food from tongs so I have to leave a rat in her enclosure overnight. If it's still there by 6am the next morning it goes to the olive. I gave her my last jumbo mouse 2 weeks ago and it was gone in 10 minutes. I just placed another feeder order last Friday and gave in and ordered 25 jumbo mice. I really want to get a little more size on her so I'll probably let her have mice for awhile and try to transition her to rats again later. If she insists on being a 'mouser' then she'll never get more than 2 at a time. If she wants more food then she'll learn to eat rats like the rest of my snakes. A real pain in the knee this one is.

Have you tried scenting the rats? The fresher and smellier the better.

One thing that helped me with my bp's short stint being a mouser (and getting him to take f/t) was to give him a half-sized mouse, and as he was swallowing stuff a small-ish rat (for him) up to its shoulders into his mouth and a bit into his throat. If I wasn't fast enough getting the rat in his mouth, or didn't put it in far enough, he'd just spit it out or keep me from getting the rat in his mouth in the first place. Scenting it at the same time will also help. It might take a couple meals of doing that before they'll make the switch, but I've heard of success with other keepers as well.

I'm not sure what you've tried though.