Switching from Live to frozen...

[tolley]

After researching snakes quite a bit, i decided to get a ball python.
I have quite the menagerie of animals in my home already,
including two red albino corn snakes, which are great, calm eat well
and just wonderful , but i wanted a larger snake.
The other day i got a ball python from a local pet store. They
assured me that they this one was captive bred and it had
been in the store since sept. They had an extensive journal of
when it had eaten etc. which was every week since they had
gotten it, no problem. The problem was ( in my opinion )
it had always eaten live mice. My corns are on frozen and its
so convenient and im not crazy about the idea of feeding live anyway.
We have handled it quite a bit since i got it and its been as gentle
as can be but yesterday i put my hand it in the cage and it struck,
a little nip, but still eek! It seemed hungry to me even though the
lady at the pet store had documented that it had eaten a mouse
the night before i got it. ( wouldnt you know) i had my doubts
but she seemed sincere.
Well i decided to thaw one of my corns frozens and it ate it immediately,
never flinched, that was tonight.
Do you think that i can expect it to go eat frozen the next time or
was it a fluke?

Also... sexing it, i know without probing there is not a definite
way to tell but his/her tail is very thick until the vent and then
very slender with only about an inch after that. I can see spurs.
Is that in males only or females too? Any ideas?

Thanks for any input, or suggestions, i would appreciae it!

Dianne

	Corn Snake The Corn Snake or Red Rat Snake (Elaphe guttata) is a species of Rat Snake.

[LdyDrgn]

Spurs are present in both sexes. In regards to Royals, sometimes the female's will be larger. No way to tell for sure unless popped or probed.

Many young Royals will eagerly switch to frozen since eating exclusively live has not been ingrained yet. The hard part will be switching it to rats. As an adult, mice are not going to be enough for it. Once you have it well established eating f/t mice, try giving it a similar sized rat.

	Frozen/Thawed A rodent or other prey item that is frozen and then thawed to be fed to a reptile or other animal.

[JuliusSqueezer]

I've always operated under the assumption that no snake requires to be "switched" to f/t. Nearly every snake I have ever caught in the wild has taken F/T on the first attempt at feeding and I'm quite certain they haven't been fed F/T in the wild. Snakes in the wild only kill because the food they most often encounter is alive. It is well documented though that they will eat dead things that they happen upon on the rare occasions that they find something dead before something faster moving does and gobbles it up first. I personally have witnessed one snake steal a meal from another snake who killed it...so at least pre-killed isn't out of the question.