Did I do it wrong?

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Originally Posted by BallPythonsAllDay

Honestly its tough to do but try and keep a good knife handy when feeding live, because live can be very dangerous to your snake and if the rodent starts biting you will have to kill it before it kills your BP

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I'm sorry, but this is terrible advice.

Keep the knife away from your snake and get a pencil or a chop stick. If the rats head is free stick the pencil in its mouth so it bites that instead of the snake.


I don't think you did anything wrong. I personally would have probably let the snake finish eating and simply kept it on clean bedding for a while if the damage wasn't bad / visible. When you see wild caught snakes, they have lots of scars from incidents like this and others.

I used to know someone who would knock the rat out before he fed it to his snake. He would knock it in the head right before feeding time. I'm not saying its the most humane thing ever, but it might be something to consider if you are gonna continue feeding live rats. or maybe switch to F/T.

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Originally Posted by CaitJaye

I used to know someone who would knock the rat out before he fed it to his snake. He would knock it in the head right before feeding time. I'm not saying its the most humane thing ever, but it might be something to consider if you are gonna continue feeding live rats. or maybe switch to F/T.

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Respectfully, this is also not good advice. A calm feeder is a safe feeder. Beyond the humane element here, if you put an animal into survival mode before introducing it to your snakes cage it poses a much greater risk than if it's totally clueless.

Ball pythons are AMBUSH predators. They do best against calm, unsuspecting prey going about their normal business.