my old neighbor used to feed his BPs dwarf hamsters and gerbils, products of his kid's pets having lots of babies. he also fed his snakes mice/rats when all the babies were gone, this was years before I ended up with my snakes, but he never had any problems, and they were free (the babies anyway).
I've never tried it, but lately I've have been tempted to grab some up when listed for free on craig's list, but the bigger ones, the teddy bear hamsters, which I'm sure is what the OP is talking about, would definitely scare me too much to feed to my BPs.