I don't think it's a waste of their energy to digest these less then prime animals. The only rats that I don't feed off are the ones that have died in their cages long enough ago to start bloating, but only because I don't want to clean up exploded rodent messes. When I used to keep snapping turtles, they'd get the bloated ones.Quote:
For me, I'd far rather have a sick rat go to waste than waste a snake's time and energy digesting a less than top quality prey item.
I guess I should also add that I don't feed these to my ball pythons. Most of the tumor ridden, sickly, thin or old rats are retired breeders that are at the ends of their lives anyway and are too big for my ball pythons. I feed these, like all of my retired breeders, to my Burms. The Burms get 3-6 retired breeders twice a month. To be sure, not all of their bi-weekly meal consists of sick animals, but there's often one or two in the mix, and I just don't see anything wrong with it, nor do I consider it detrimental to my snakes for the above mentioned reasons.
Mark