noob experience

well, we had a failed feeding attempt with a live rat tonight.... mostly my fault though. at my roommates bidding, i changed how i was presenting the rat by letting it roam the opposite side of the tank and letting Lennie hunt it. this may have been fine, except i got bored and moved the rat to Lennie, pissing off the rat (when in the past was already eaten at this point) and startling Lennie. this resulted in a flailing, screaming rat that just did not settle with Lennie. he refused to strike, and i was disappointed i listened to my roomies.

I don't think the issue was listening to your roommate about putting the rat at the other side of the enclosure to allow your snake space to hunt it. It sounds like the issue is you get bored pretty quickly. Shoving a live prey at a snake isn't a good or safe idea.

right, thats kinda what i figured. last week, Lennie nailed it just fine, but it was a calm rat that i held a good 8 inches from him. he came closer and got it in a few seconds. oh well, do it right next week i guess

It's up to you how you feed but personally I never restrain living prey. I've found that tends to make them more nutsy but then everyone has their own way of feeding.

I dont feed live rats. only mice rats are more likely IMO to bite. When I feed a rat to my female I euthanize it in a Co2 chamber I dont like thumping them. Had bad experiences with F/t rats (burst open and guts everywhere happened more than once too)

well, the only reason i've been feeding that way is because thats how i was trying to present the f/t rats previously. it just so happened that with the switch to live, the prey was coiled before the rat/mice got overly excited. i'm mostly just disappointed because i wanted 3 successful feeds before trying to switch back to f/t. now that plan is on hold again

Is there a particular reason you switched from f/t to live and now are switching back to f/t so quickly?

just that he wasn't eating the f/t, so i went to live to get him eating again. its just that we only have one pet store here, so rats are a little expensive. although lately, i've been considering feeding live all the time because i should be getting a new job soon, so i'll have a budget that can support a live diet.