For convenience live or frozen/thawed?

i use F/T's... i have a chest freezer in the snake room and i place a order 2 times a year. i dont have a problem thawing,,,,, 5 gal bucket, fill it with the right amount of rats, fill with hot water. ill go do other thing s around the house for about 1 hour, come back empty the water out, fill with hot water again, let set for about 20 minuets and then get to feeding!! if i had the time and space, id breed my own, but id still euthanize and do the F/T thing.. the only problem i have with the way i do it is the OUTRAGOUS shipping charges........
spooky

If I had the option to breed my own rodents again it would be more convenient to feed live to all of my snakes. Since I can't and don't want to make a trip to the store or rodent breeder multiple times a week, frozen is the way to go for me.

Both.

I breed my own rodents I have 7 snakes on f/t the rest are on live. I like having a few that will take f/t just to help me maintain my supply closer to what I use. In the last year I have only had to purchase one rat from a pet store and that was just cause he was cute and my daughter wanted him, go figure.

~ Karl

I just don't want to breed my own feeders! :O Feeder mealworms are fine, they take like no effort, but to properly care for rats in a way I feel comfortable(having had pet rodents before) I would feel like I had suddenly gotten 20 pets dumped on me if I was trying to breed them. For me, I'd rather to f/t. I don't mind having to go get a live or p/k for the occasional stubborn feeder. For me it means convenience in that my time is not filled up with the extra time it takes to clean them to the point where they don't stink and deal with stillborn babies, rodent health problems, getting attached to more short lived animals, feeding, general maintenance.. I will have enough of that with the other pets I WANT to have! But that's just me! I just don't want a rodent colony personally. I know there are a ton of pros that may outweigh the cons, but hey, it's just a personal thing :)

And thawing has never been a hassle for me. I plan ahead on my feeding day and get all the food out in the morning before I go through my daily routine. Do schoolwork, get food, all that jazz while they heat up to the temp of our warm reptile room all the way through their bodies. Then when it's time to feed I blast them with a hairdryer for about a minute and it's feeding time! I think some people suffer from the 'watched pot never boils' aka 'the watched rodent never thaws'.. Just chill out, it'll be warm soon. Let the snake sniff out that good rat smell in the air and have to wait, it'll just mean he's more excited when you do feed them! :D

And my family has ALWAYS had a second fridge in the garage with an empty freezer, so when I move out, I'll be continuing that tradition of the extra freezer. So I have room for my frozen meats for my snakes! :D

I am so pleased that I have been able to get almost all of my ball pythons converted to frozen / thawed in the past few months. That means I can cut way back on the rodent breeding, which I am in the process of doing. As far as process goes, the night before I am going to feed, I get out about as many rats to thaw as ball pythons that need to be fed. I warm them in hot water and feed them on tongs. They either strike it off the tongs or they don't. If they don't, I will not leave it in their cage, hoping they will eat it sometime during the night, because that rarely works and results in lots of waste from my experience. Typically one or more ball python will refuse its meal, and I expect that. After all the pythons have had their frozen / thawed rats offered, whatever is left goes to the boas and retics, which never refuse anything unless they are in shed. If I have to thaw a couple more for the boas and retics, that is just fine. In any case, there is never any waste.

I currently have 20 snakes. Everyone is on ft. I don't have the space for rats and don't want to donate the time to caring for them. I have an extra freezer in my garage (got it off Craigslist for $50) that is solely dedicated to rats.

Feeding day I get out as many as I need, and warm them in hot water. Usually takes about an hour with water changes every 20 mins (I set my kitchen timer). Then feed. Whatever doesn't get eaten goes to someone else or gets refrozen for next week.

I do go to the pet store for stubborn feeders who want live (currently only have 1 of them right now). I'm working on converting him.

I take them out of the freezer put them all in a 5 gallon bucket with warm to hot water, not to hot to burn your skin. Let them defrost take them out of bucket dry off and feed i keep anywhere between 20 and 100 feeders in my freezer at any time and restock every 3 months. If something isn't eaten it goes back in the freezer and is the first things feed off next week