Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have three Pied Hets that are about 6 months old. 2 of the Hets are about 500g and the other is about 300g. I have been feeding them f/t large mice weekly for about 2 months or so. I am trying to make the switch to f/t rats for the two larger hets, and they do not seem interested at all in the f/t rats. They were very strong eaters on the f/t large mice. Any suggestions on how to make the switch over to rats because I am getting tired of wasting these frozen rats.

Thanks,
Robby and Ryan

one way: buy live mice, throw the thawed rat in there with the bedding and and let the mice live with it and crawl all over it for 6 hours or more. make sure the mice are well fed or the thawed rat will get nibbled up. then heat and offer it to your ball as it will now smell more like what they have gotten used to. next time leave rat in for 5 hours, then after that for 4 hours, etc, until its zero hours. they are now weaned off mice.

if they ignore this technique, first get them eating "dead" in this case dead mice. if you kill fresh mice and immediately offer them up, moving them a bit on the forceps, they should hit them. if they dont, you got a hardcore case on your hands...

you could also try to feed live rats.

Thanks folks for your advice. We will give it a shot.