Found a feeding trick haha

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Originally Posted by Bloodsong

Just wondering, but does anyone here feed f/t?

Safer on the snake and you don't have to worry about hurting the prey at all.

Bloodsong

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I feed F/T. I find a lot of people on this forum attack the "safer for the snake" reason for frozen thawed. Personally I feed F/T for the same reason I don't feed my cats live mice. I am not interested in keeping rodents, I keep cats so that I don't have to have rodents in the house. Both my snake and my cats do fine with their respective substitutes for live prey. Its really just a matter of convenience. I went down to the basement last night and got 2 mice and two steaks out of the freezer. The steaks were for me and my girlfriend.

I am lucky though, my BP strikes and constricts as if the prey were live. If she stopped doing that I would consider switching her to live.

There are many members on bp.net that feed F/T, and there are many users that feed live. It is true that F/T are good to use because of their is no threat to the snake, but if done properly, there is nothing dangerous about feeding live. Many choose to feed live because they breed their own rats/mice, and many feed live because their snakes will take nothing but.

I feed F/T because my bp will take them easily and they are convenient. If my bp went off feed, I would certainly try live.

Just had to ask. Three years ago I lost a two and a half year old burm to a live rat on a hemostat. I thought it was safe too. Ends up that when they don't constrict just right and those little legs get to kicking infection can mean a quick death. Now if I can't fine frozen I pre-kill the prey myself.

Bloodsong

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Originally Posted by Bloodsong

Just had to ask. Three years ago I lost a two and a half year old burm to a live rat on a hemostat. I thought it was safe too. Ends up that when they don't constrict just right and those little legs get to kicking infection can mean a quick death. Now if I can't fine frozen I pre-kill the prey myself.

Bloodsong

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I find myself defending me F/T choice more often than not. Your story is one of the big reasons I started with F/T. I know the risk is low but I am just not going to unless the risk is outweighed by something else, like a snake that won't eat for a long time and for no good reason. I really don't understand why people ask me why I feed F/T when those same people feed their cat(s) / dog(s) kibble and have no problem cooking up a frozen steak. Because its safe, convenient, and the death of the animal is removed from my house.

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Originally Posted by simplechamp

The latency period of adaptation for the pit organ takes 50-150ms to adjust? That's an average of 1/10th of a second. Wouldn't the snake adapt very fast to changes in temps in it's surroundings?

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Yes, so if you stick a mouse right on it's nose then after about a tenth of a second it will adjust so that the temperature of the mouse is in fact the temperature of it's surroundings, essentially making the mouse invisible.

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Originally Posted by Egapal

I find myself defending me F/T choice more often than not. Your story is one of the big reasons I started with F/T. I know the risk is low but I am just not going to unless the risk is outweighed by something else, like a snake that won't eat for a long time and for no good reason. I really don't understand why people ask me why I feed F/T when those same people feed their cat(s) / dog(s) kibble and have no problem cooking up a frozen steak. Because its safe, convenient, and the death of the animal is removed from my house.

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Even if the animal won't eat for, say, two weeks, there are so many tricks to use to avoid live prey. Personally, I have had to use this trick twice, once with a new BP that wasn't eating due to slow acclimation and once with a friends CRB that wouldn't eat while recovering from a bad RI, and never had any trouble getting a feeding reaction. Braining is messy and not the most pleasant thing to do, but you crack the skullcap on a f/t rat or mouse and ANY snake is going to have a very strong feed reaction.

Bloodsong

Today I kinda had something similar happen ~_~

I was feeding one of my snakes a thawed rat pup and it struck and missed but hit in a way that it moved the rodent in the hemostats and a nice chunk of skin ripped off and was left in the hemostats while the rodent was next to the snake, lol.

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Originally Posted by Oxylepy

Yes, so if you stick a mouse right on it's nose then after about a tenth of a second it will adjust so that the temperature of the mouse is in fact the temperature of it's surroundings, essentially making the mouse invisible.

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Yup yup, that makes sense. This is why it is important for the prey to be moving and is an added attraction to the snake. Having the heat signature moving should make it easier for the snake to track before it's senses adjust to the prey's heat signature.....

I believe this is more important to young inexperienced balls who are still learning about their prey. Older balls should be in a routine when it comes to feeding and they know when it is chow time. 2 of my older balls will eat a dead rat left in the tub overnight, the rat is room temp and I don't have to zombie dance them, so they are not relying on their heat pits but rather their vomeronasal (jacobson) organ to detect their food....