Input from experienced live feeders, please

When I had my first ball python, I was also nervous about the move from mice to rats. However, it's been my experience that mice are FAR meaner than rats are.

I've fed live for the past 8 years, mostly rats. I've fed about 20K live feedings in that time. NEVER have I stunned an animal - I personally find that to be horrible advice - it only makes the critter that much more defensive and scared - especially if the come out of it while with a snake that decides they don't want to eat that week.

I also don't stand over my snakes with tongs in hand to intervene. Not even with my most expensive snakes. They are efficient at dispatching their prey without my intervention. I've had no significant injuries in all those feedings besides an occasional scratch - never anything that caused bleeding. Am I "lucky" after that many feedings? Nope - in my own personal data sample, let's pretend I had 3 significant injuries - that would be a 3 in 20,000 chance, or a 0.0001% chance of an injury. I have better odds of getting in to a car accident. ;)

Other than for the occasional mouser, I feed rats exclusively and prefer them now - I did raise my founding females up to adult size on mice, because that's what I could get easily at the time. In my experience, they are not aware that they are about to become dinner and are found in the corner grooming themselves if a particular snake decides to take the week off from eating.

What Robin said. :)

Though I do tend to hover until I'm comfortable with the snake's accuracy. For instance, my older snakes almost always hit the head dead on. My BCI however, is over zealous. She will grab whatever part of the rat she can. So she gets fed f/t. Lol. Having a snake that will take f/t is awesome though. I love how convenient it is just going to the freezer instead of the store, and then I don't have to deal with the smell associated with live feeders. But alas, I have 2 that adamantly refuse f/t, and my newest BP is about to be switched as soon as I can get to the next show to pick up more f/t, but as of yet he is still eating live rat pups. Basically, what I'm saying is, f/t really isn't that bad. I used to be bothered by the thought of it...now frozen rats in my freezer is normal. You shouldn't have a problem feeding live, I have for years and have never had a problem. But if it worries you...f/t can be wonderful for a variety of reasons. ;)

First of all, trust your snake. They know what to do, and are good at doing it. ;)

Secondly, make sure your feeder rats are well fed and watered before you offer them to your snake. Also, don't grab the rat by the tail and drop it in, pick up the rat, that way they don't get put into panic mode. If a rat doesn't get nailed the second it enters the tub, they usually just run around sniffing everything, (snake included) and pooping everywhere. Then sit in a corner and clean themselves.

Me personally, I stick around with my tongs just in case they don't get the best catch. Live is by far the easiest way, imo. Cheaper too, because I don't waste rats! :p




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What Robin said x 1000

I don't think I want to know what % of keepers practice 'stunning,' but please don't add to the statistic.

I've never stunned a rat either. As I have heard others mention, you get to know your invidual snakes and their body language. I can usually tell after the first few minutes who is going to eat and who is not. If one of my bps is shying away or just goes and curls up in it's hide, I just take out that rat and feed it to the next bp in line. Just don't leave rats in with your bp unsupervised for any extended period of time.

Thank you all for the good information. I feel a lot better about it now!
I only have one snake and so far she's a voracious eater. It's not inconvenient at all for me to monitor feeding and it sounds like that's really all it takes.

I'm really glad to see some people aren't into stunning! Ha ha. There's no way I was going to do that, even if 100 people said I should. I'd be online ordering f/t right now. I just don't have the stomach for it.

On top of what everybody said, don't forget to feed the appropriate sized food.
A live Medium would be the max appropriate size to feed a ball python. Beyond that, adult large rats are huge and more aware of danger. They can fight back pretty easily and pack a nasty bite. All reasons why I feed smaller meals more frequently than larger and less often. The younger rats are more oblivious to everything. And even if a small rat bit down on an adult snake, it probably wouldn't do much damage. And weanlings and pups are close to harmless. A rat of equivalent size to an adult mouse is harmless.

And all the 'feeder killed snake!' stories are from people who left their snake unattended for extended periods of time or fed inappropriately sized prey. The rat got hungry and went for the only other thing in the tub. So keeping the feeder well fed and watered is important. If your snake doesn't eat within a designated time(mine is 30 mins), just take the feeder out and save it for the next feeding day.

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I moved my snakes up to gerbils before I put them on rats, theyre a little bit smaller, and arent really that agressive.. plus they smell more like what they would eat in the wild and are usually gone within a few minutes >.> I also have a snake hook I made from a coat hanger handy incase, or even to hold back the leg of the rat or food if it looks like its going to hurt the snakes. The only problem with that is finding a pet store willing to sell gerbils as feeder.. I know my petstore only did because they were trying to sell out of them, and i kept buying them as feeder so they gave me the feeder price rather then the 12$ a pop. I dont know if that helps any..

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Originally Posted by PiercingPrincess

I moved my snakes up to gerbils before I put them on rats, theyre a little bit smaller, and arent really that agressive.. plus they smell more like what they would eat in the wild and are usually gone within a few minutes >.> I also have a snake hook I made from a coat hanger handy incase, or even to hold back the leg of the rat or food if it looks like its going to hurt the snakes. The only problem with that is finding a pet store willing to sell gerbils as feeder.. I know my petstore only did because they were trying to sell out of them, and i kept buying them as feeder so they gave me the feeder price rather then the 12$ a pop. I dont know if that helps any..

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I wouldn't ever feed mine gerbils.



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In the last year of feeding live, the only injury I've had is that a rat scratched a snake with it's toenail when it jumped over his back when he missed. It was a very tiny scratch and it healed quickly. I get worse from paper cuts.

When you see a snake chewed up majorly from a rat that snake has been left in with the rodent for days.