Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have an adult male bp that has been eating ft mice his whole life about twice a week (would feed rats but local petstore doesnt sell them frozen. I will be getting two more baby females and now it seems like it could save me money to order them. My question is how should I go about switching my male and females that have probably been feeding on live hopper mice to rats? For the male should I try scenting the rat with a mouse? For the females should I first swith to ft mice than to rats? THANKS

I'd say before trying to do all these things, just see if he'll eat a rat right off the bat. Sometimes that happens. Just use a rat that is about the same size and color as the mice you have been feeding. If he's in the habit of eating 3 or 4 mice at the time, just put 2 mice or so together with the rat when you thaw them out. Then you can feed a mouse first followed by the rat and then another mouse or something like that.You can do the same with live by putting the rats in with the mice. I switched an adult female live mouse feeder to a live rat feeder and from there to an F/T rat feeder, it just takes some patience.

Rob Reiding.

for the hatchling females, if you want to feed rats, start with rats. Order some rat pinkies or fuzzys and gradually work to something bigger as they grow. Don't feed them mice or they are likely to not want rats. As for switching your adult, there are a lot of tricks you can try like scenting or putting rats in with mice, but your best bet might be to just keep feeding f/t mice.
However, some balls will eat anything, so it never hurts to try...good luck