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My red-tail (~4') will no longer eat rats. At one point in time, I was feeding him live rats - he got bit before I could stop it. I put neosporin on his wound, and he healed up nicely. Since then, I've stuck pretty much to frozen rats. He will occasionally eat one, but for the most part, he'd rather go hungry. He will readily take live (and usually thawed) mice. It's not cost effective (and I've read it's not as healthy, either) to feed him several smaller items instead of one the width of his body. I have tried feeding him a mouse, and then offering a rat, to no avail. I fnially got him some smaller live rats to try, too, but he wouldn't eat them, either. After a few days of attempting to feed him the rats, I bought some mice, which he ate almost instantly. It had been a month since his last meal...

Any suggestions?

My GF has a JCP that was getting to big for mice. So when it was time to switch the JCP decided it didnt want to.

First we tried frozen rats...nope

Then a brained frozen rat...nope

Then fresh killed rat in its feed box...nope

Then fresh killed brained in its feed box...nope

Then a live rat in its feed box...nope

Then we tried starving it for three weeks first and then giving it a live rat in its feed box...nope

Then we tried scenting the live rat with a mouse and putting it in its feedbox...nope

Finally we tried scenting a live rat pup with two different mice and then rolling it around in mice shavings. This time we put it in her cage with rat food. After two days I almost gave up and took the rat out to feed to another snake but at 6:43 in the AM I woke up to rat screams. She finally took it.

I will wait another 2 weeks before I feed her and it will be another rat propably scented fresh killed.

Try all the methods listed above but if they do take the rat do not go back to mice and becareful with the size of the rodent, I kept it smaller than usual so that I could worry less about the rat fighting back. I felt like a rat pup/weanling had no chance against my GFs 1.5 year old JCP.

Good luck
Sayyed

np