Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I inherited my Ball from a broken household. It is an awesome reptile and I've had her now for over 2 years. She has easily doubled her size and weight since I've had her. When I first got her, she was a problem eater (surprise!). Since this was my first Boid, I made all the usual fumbling around mistakes and am still doing quite well at continuing to do so. She took live small rats and adult mice at first. It didn't seem to matter as long as they moved. Then she stopped taking them abruptly and I soon learned by watching her whether she would eat or not. Since it was impractical to watch her with live food for hours at a time, I tried euthenizing the fresh prey and she took it the first time and refused after that. After about 2 months and several anxiety attacks later, I thought I had come across a great solution. I bought a half dozen live fuzzy mice and placed them in the cage in a bowl and they were devoured voraciously. I read somewhere that is one of their preferred ways to hunt in the wild...go into rodent burrows, eat the litter and sleep there. This worked out great. On the rare occacions she refused to eat, my colubrids would more than happily finish off the rest. This was costing me about $8 bucks a week to feed her and was making my local pet shop very happy. Now I'm trying to get her to take frozen thawed adult mice. Once again, she took it the first time and is now refusing them (going on a month now). Is it a good plan to just be stubborn about it and keep offering the same thing and hope she will give in and start accepting them regularly? My current strategy is one adult mouse a week. She's always refused FT small rats or live rat fuzzies. Any clues or advice would be welcome. BTW, I've been going to anxiety management classes so I'm not as stressed as I used to be about this.

Try warming the frozen thawed. Put it in a baggie and soak it in hot water for a min or two. Use forceps and pinch the mouse just behind to head and wiggle it in front of her. Try doing this at night when she is hunting, she should take it.
Lynn