Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was thinking this weekend about the African Rat posts and how they appear to be a great solution for problem eating WC or CH balls.

I was wondering if anyone has tried to scent their normal mice/rats with African rat bedding? It would seem like the way to go before getting them hooked on the African rats themselves and hopefully weaning them to normal rodents eventually, plus saving a ton of money by not having to provide African rats.

It hasnt worked for us, We produce our own African Rats and we have taken the used bedding and let mice and rats crawl through it for a day and they just wanted the African Rats.. They arent that expensive.. And for less headaches it is just easier for us to feed them to the animals that want them.

Bryan

Where were you able to find female african rats?
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1.2 Het Pied
1.1 Het Lavender Albino
1.1 Het Albino
0.7 Normals
1.0 50% Het lav albino

My females came from a close friend of mine.. I was very fortunate to be able to aquire these guys and they are awsome to feed. Adults are more like the size of a gerbil.

Bryan

Are they larger or smaller than an average sized small rat(50-80g)?
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1.2 Het Pied
1.1 Het Lavender Albino
1.1 Het Albino
0.7 Normals
1.0 50% Het lav albino

Hi there,
I have been using them for a while now, and I have experimented with different techniques. I have used bedding to shake rats in, I have housed AR's with rats, but niether worked. The reason is AR's DO NOT SMELL! They are odorless, I swear. I dont have to change their bedding in forever. They dont even drink water. They do, but not often. So we believe, because they dont drink as much, they dont urinate as much, which means, not as much ammonia smell. We also noticed that when they do smell like urine, snakes dont eat them as readily. Thus, we think snakes that dont eat rats or mice, or are "PICKY EATERS" are just smell "sensitive" and dont like ammonia or nitrogen odors. For fun we washed rats prior to feeding them out to picky eaters, dried them with towels, put them in fresh bedding, with no water or food, and the snakes ate them. We did however put them in the same room as the AR's prior to feeding. The feeding response is not as impressive as AR's, but it works to change snakes over to the rats. It is time consuming and a big pain, but it works.
I hope our experiment helped you.

we are working on a all natural based odor neutralizer for rat and mice bins. This will work for application to rats and mice prior to feeding, and has minerals and vitamins. We als hope to find a good, safe, not so stinky smell additive that will generate a great feeding response. It will be tested and patented before we introduce it to the market.

This makes sense to me. We got some mice from a person whose animals reeked. They looked awful, too, so when the snakes refused to eat them, we thought they might be sick and the snakes sensed this, but it may have been the smell. We refuse to buy any more mice from that person, but on the very picky snakes, a pre-dinner bath may be just the seasoning needed for the mice/rats that don't smell that bad to us. Thanks!
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3.2 Ball python (Hoss, Little Man, Adam, Helen, and the new girl who gets named when she eats)
2.2 Corn snakes (Orlando and Legolas and the newbies)
0.1 King snake (Sidhe which sounds exactly like "she"
0.0.1 GTP (Kissy the Red)
1.1 Haitian Boa (Enkil and Akasha)

And bunches of furry pets

n/p

great point..some times if one of my snakes doesn't want to eat I feed the rodent to another snake... I wash and dry the rodent off then I throw it in with another snake. Usually they snatch them faster than usual lol....on the other hand I have some snakes that seem to like those furry fuzzy hamster looking mice that stink (so i hear.. broken nose = no smell lol)....this may explain why some snake will take frozen over live too...how much smell could a freshly thawed mouse have?
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we're here because a hobby became an obsession... if only every one had this much fun

some days your the dog, some days your the hydrant...don't know who started this saying but it's the truth

I tried rats that had been in with ARs and nothing. I even tried putting a scented one in right after they ate an african and they hit it once and back off.

Havent tried mice though. Ill try that tonight and let you know.

I looked on feedersurplus, and they are selling large africans that are 20g. Are these really large enough to raise a snake on? I could see just to maintain weight on an adult WC, but wouldn't it be nearly impossible to get a snake up to breeding weight on these without feeding 3-4 at a time? Most of my snake will not take multiple mice or rats even the good feeders. I am wondering if they would with these. If I did feed 3 at a time that would be $9 a week. That is pretty tough to handle even just for my picky feeders.
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1.2 Het Pied
1.1 Het Lavender Albino
1.1 Het Albino
0.7 Normals
1.0 50% Het lav albino

So they better switch soon or ill send em back to africa!

n/p

Seeing how mice smell more than rats, if Swich is right I doubt if you'll get much of a response from the mice. Still, I'm sure it's worth a try.

I find it interesting about the smell sensitivity of the WC snakes. I always thought their feeding response was greater with regular mice when compared to rats, yet mice smell much more than rats. Perhaps there is more going on than just smell such as shape or behavior.

Maybe thats just mine or maybe just because I dont like the smell of rats either! haha

Hi there,
I negleted to say that our results where best with small rats. When you start using bigger rodents the snakes take longer to strike, and some rats dont even get eaten. Some of our WC picky eaters just strike at med rats as if they where scared. Its seems that they are turned off by the larger ones. Weanlings are quickly devoured, as with small. I guess its because they are used to eating rodents compareable to the AR, with respect to size. And its true, you will have to feed each one 2 or 3 a week to sustain average growth rates.

it should work.............I have done it with gerbils and chinese hamsters and deer mice......
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you think????

The reason scenting with AR's does not work is that they have very little odor as they are not heavy water drinkers and thus perspire much less than other rodent spp. On the other hand norweigan rats and mice have a very strong odor so in essence you are trying to mask a strong odor with a weak odor.
one other good thing we have noticed is that once a picky feeder is eating on a regular basis many times it will go ahead after time switch to rats or mice and also snakes that were previous mouse or rat eaters switch back and forth regularly it seems that some times they just need a reminder what their mouth is for.
On a good note, we had success with a wild caught eating pre killed today. This was our first attempt at it but we have several people doing more F/T testing for us.