Am I a bad person!

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Originally Posted by Loft Lizard

Live feeding must be done responsibly. Sadly too many people do not engage in this, and then all live feeders get a bad rap for it.

I feed close to 20 snakes live every week and have never had a mishap. Not to say it will never happen, but like any other aspect of animal keeping, people need to be attentive and engaged in what they are doing.

Bruce

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I can see where you are coming from, and I'm going to have to feed my troublesome ball live food.

The problem is, I don't feel like I can do it responsibly because I can't WATCH. I have to leave the room quiet and come back and check to see if its gone.
I don't like doing that, it worries me that something could go wrong.

My corn snake wraps around her pray hardly tight enough to kill it, which is why I would never feed her live. She also doesn't put much effort into striking at it. :oops:

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Originally Posted by blackcrystal22

I can see where you are coming from, and I'm going to have to feed my troublesome ball live food.

The problem is, I don't feel like I can do it responsibly because I can't WATCH. I have to leave the room quiet and come back and check to see if its gone.
I don't like doing that, it worries me that something could go wrong.

My corn snake wraps around her pray hardly tight enough to kill it, which is why I would never feed her live. She also doesn't put much effort into striking at it. :oops:

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I do not watch my snakes eat either... I feed them appropriate sized prey and I give them the privacy to hunt and consume without interuption.

I do not leave prey in for extended periods of time, and I know each snake and I know at what point I have a refusal on my hands.

I feed younger prey, and I feed by weight. A 30g crawler is not going to do any damage to a BP, and if it takes 2 or 3 prey items to reach the amount I want to feed then that is OK.

I do not feed any of my colubrids live prey either (I should have been more specific in that I feed my pythons live prey), they are not efficient killers, and mine at least, are garbage disposals and will eat whatever I give them.

Having a few FT feeders is great. You can plan for the feeds, buy the right size, and it is more convenient.

Bruce

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Originally Posted by Loft Lizard

I do not watch my snakes eat either... I feed them appropriate sized prey and I give them the privacy to hunt and consume without interuption.

I do not leave prey in for extended periods of time, and I know each snake and I know at what point I have a refusal on my hands.

I feed younger prey, and I feed by weight. A 30g crawler is not going to do any damage to a BP, and if it takes 2 or 3 prey items to reach the amount I want to feed then that is OK.

I do not feed any of my colubrids live prey either (I should have been more specific in that I feed my pythons live prey), they are not efficient killers, and mine at least, are garbage disposals and will eat whatever I give them.

Having a few FT feeders is great. You can plan for the feeds, buy the right size, and it is more convenient.

Bruce

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I agree with the younger prey, its a good idea too.
For some odd reason, my mice haven't been breeding, so I have all small adults now, which is rather frustrating. :[

The first time I fed my corn snake a pinkie mouse (I had a lot at the time) she at it whole, without killing it. This I figured was bad internally cause they moved around inside a bit and was horribly inhumane. From then on I made sure I humanely killed the pinkies before feeding them. :(

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Originally Posted by blackcrystal22

The first time I fed my corn snake a pinkie mouse (I had a lot at the time) she at it whole, without killing it.

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Ditto... my sweet goth snow corn consumed a live crawler butt first and alive. You only have to hear that once to know that it isn't something you want to hear again.

Knowing your snakes and knowing what works is critical. That is part of being an attentive keeper.

Bruce

The origional way of feeding pre-kill was to take the mouse or rat by the tail and whack it on the counter trying to break its neck. The invention of the CO2 chamber has changed that. We built a CO2 chamber as a couple of our snakes take F/T and we breed our own rats. Our CO2 chamber is the home grown variety that uses baking soda and vinegar. It is two plastic tubs stacked on top of each other with the mixing chamber on the bottom and the rodent tank on top. Holes drilled in the lid and bottom of holding chamber that are glued together and presure relief hole on one side of the mixing tub. It works, but you can see everything that happens and if you watch it doesn't look very humane either. Adult rats will go crazy for about 30 seconds before finally passing out. If you mastered the old method one whack and it was done.

You did what you felt was best and no one can blame you for that. I had a snake strike a live rat pup once and the rat pup squeeled for over half an hour. The worse part is it was the first group of rat pups home grown for feeders so the wife was a little attached to them. I had to send her out of the house as she was in tears just feeding them let alone hearing this. We all deal with what we have to so we can make sure our snakes eat. No one said raising preditors like this would be easy nor is it for the faint of heart. We all do what we have to.

Now you have more info and a learning experience to grow from and hopefully you take the experience and the advice and go a different direction from now on. No one starts a hobby knowing everything. No one can blame a person for trying to make the best choice on the spot with limited information. It may have been better to come here and ask for suggestions first, but that is water under the bridge and here you are now finding out and that is probably becouse you feel something was wrong with the way you did it. Experience and sharing those experiences are what makes a hobby fun. If you never try new things you will never have any personal experience to share! Next time someone asks how to pre-kill you at least have the experience to say don't try this cause when I did the process was not pleasant! :oops:

I am appalled that some of you actually smack an animal against a hard surface and then actually follow that up with an 'lol'. Jesus. WTH, seriously? So you can kill them humanely with CO2 but you'd rather beat them to death, and possibly have them still alive and suffering until the snake finishes them off?

I personally am disgusted by people who think it's ok, and even funny, to kill a prey item by smacking it against the wall or a table. Aside from CO2, one of the only other HUMANE methods of euthanizing prey items is cervical dislocation. However, if done wrong it can cause a lot of pain and suffering. It's a sad statement on what this world has become when people find it funny to kill an animal.

To the op...I would guess it was not a big deal to you until your mom and sister got upset. If it was a big deal, seeing as how you have access to this thing called the internet, why wouldn't you do some research regarding the best method? Spending 10 minutes looking up the best methods online seemed like too much work?

I use only f/t rats myself so I have not had to pre kill. However, if the situation arose where I needed to pre kill a small number of rats or mice I would place a mouse or rat trap (as appropriate) baited with peanut butter in a tub and place the rodent in the tub. This would be a quicker and more painless method than any of the aforementioned methods. Maybe there is a reason not to do this, as I have never pre killed and am only saying what I would try to do in this situation. Of course this would be too tedious for a large number of prey items. Just a thought.

sdirkle regular traps (i.e. snaptraps) can get VERY ugly. They can catch body parts (a little foot for example). I used one once for a mouse problem and when I found a little foot in the trap I threw them all away. Now a zapper (they walk into it and are electrocuted) maybe somewhat humane for dealing with rodent problems if live traps are not suitable, it only takes a few seconds.