first feed a complete success, or, why do people seem to prefer F/T?

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Originally Posted by Blightedchemist

I've heard there are dangers with feeding live, I havent looked into them yet, one because it will make me paranoid and id want to switch over as soon as, and two because I always plan to monitor feeding time.

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Basically with any feeding method it's all about learning all you can about that particular feeding style and then being very observant of that specific snake and how it responds to the food offered and the style you offer it. You can harm a snake feeding f/t incorrectly. You can harm a snake feed p/k incorrectly. You can harm a snake feeding live incorrectly.

Most of the horror stories you hear about any feeding style, or pictures you see online of snakes chewed up by their live prey are more about the errors some human made than a problem with the predator/prey dynamic.

Learn all you can, ask all the questions you feel you need to ask, assess your particular snake, decide what feeding method works for you but more importantly what method works for that snake and also determine the availability of that prey for you to get in a top quality condition on a regular basis. Do all that and I'm sure you and your snake will do just fine. :)

Well Joanna, since you said I can ask questions... I fed live to Makena on Monday and I was there, watching and hovering the whole time, in case something went wrong. She was fine and attacked the mouse the right way (had her mouth wrapped around its face), but I can't help but think how the situation can go wrong. I can just imagine an overzealous snake striking the rear/side of a mouse, and the mouse turning around and biting. Mind you, I'm standing right there ready to split them up. But it seems that it would only take a split second for the mouse to bite. Have you ever experienced anything like that? I've seen people mention putting something in the mouse's mouth if it tries to bite, but that takes a few seconds... Any advice on how to feed live correctly?

We're here to help with those questions so please always feel free to ask them.

Feeding live requires a few things to be in place. You want a healthy, well fed, well hydrated, calm prey animal. That might mean if you buy from a pet store that you keep that mouse or rat a couple of days so it does get a chance for few meals and a drink if the conditions at the pet store feeder bin were pretty overcrowded. Anytime you feed live you need to have a small rodent setup anyways to handle the occasional refusals and so forth so planning ahead for your live prey is a smart thing to do for both the prey and the snake.

You want to make sure you've sized the prey correctly. For a ball python you are comparing the widest girth of your snake empty (that is not full of food or feces) with the widest girth of the rodent (that's the hips/butt area on mice & rats). Btw, rodents appear smaller than they are racing around a feeder bin - word to the wise LOL.

So you have a healthy, fed, watered, reasonably unstressed rodent and a hungry snake.

Make sure the snake is awake, aware and ready. Put the live rodent in the furthest corner of the snake's enclosure from where the snake is. Don't drop a live prey item into a snake's face - that's asking for trouble and doesn't allow your snake to set up it's strike. Leave it's hides and so forth in the enclosure as most bp's use them (they are ambush predators). Don't restraint the rodent as that just generally terrifies them and makes them aggressive.

Normally the rodent will just sniff around the enclosure and wander by the snake at some point, even going up to sniff it. Most feeder rodents have little to no prey instinct left as they are many generations from being actively hunted. Usually the snake will at that point strike hard, fast and quickly get control of it's prey. If the snake is handling a prey of the right size, in the normal course of events, it's over within seconds.

We monitor the feed only until the snake has control of it's dinner, then we back off. When we monitor we are close but not hovering. These snakes will react to you as a possible predator if you get too close or hover directly over them. You don't want your snake distracted by you when it needs to be fixed on it's prey. Especially when they settle to eat their prey after constriction is finished, many of them will not finish the feeding if you remain in the immediate area. Monitor but do so from a common sense distance.

There is no way I'll tell you your snake will never get bitten. I can only tell you that we feed over 30 snakes per week here (closer to 40 now with the new hatchings but they aren't ready to eat yet). All the BP's eat live (other than a few hatchlings that are sold and the customers requested f/t feeding). Every week all the snakes eat the rats we raise to feed them. No snakes in our collection carry any lasting scars from being live fed appropriately. The occasional nail scratch or dying nip doesn't get through those scales which were designed by nature for snakes that eat live prey.

When we went to all live feeds we did a lot of research. We asked a ton of questions and we took it very slow. We still are careful in live feeding on a new snake and tend to give it a smaller live prey item than it could take so we can judge it's hunting abilities and make sure it's able to handle it's prey in the efficient manner that snakes are designed to do.

i have a question though. i feed live and ive only had one snake get injured cause he decided to squeeze the mouse so that mr. mouses mouth was around clarence's (my bp) neck. dumb snake. however because the bite wasnt that severe i let clarence finish his meal while i freaked out.

what i want to know is if for some reason the rat turns on the snake and tries to fight for its life what do you do? should you snatch it out of the snakes cage or just let it go and hope for the best?

i think you'd snatch it out of the cage but has anyone else ever had this happen?

Quite honestly I've never had the situation arise that I had to intervene. Anytime one of them got a less than perfect hold on the rat, before the rat could really do any damage, it was dead. Realistically in most cases the constriction is so quick and so completely overwhelming to the rat's system that they just aren't doing much biting and chewing on a snake. You tend to see more problems when a snake isn't hunting a rodent and the rodent is improperly left in the enclosure live for extended periods of time, without food, etc. and goes after the snake or if the rodent is far, far too big for the snake so the snake can't get good and fast control of it.

My "hovering" is just a few feet away, with the lights to the room shut off with the lid of the tub removed. Last time she did really well and had the situation more than under control. My one concern would be that she didn't really wrap the mouse. Instead, she sort of pinned it down under her body. The mouse was 12% of her body weight, so it was appropriately sized. I'm not sure if my fears have much merit; it seems I fed live correctly. Thanks for the advice, and I'm sure I'll have more questions as things come up.

In my case(still first time with me) the mouse was actually very helpful in a great feeding. It was actually quite comical! the mouse was sniffing around and literally came nose to nose with Monty. A split second later Monty had himself a mouse. I actually recorded it, I'll have to post it somewhere at link it. I only recorded it because it was our proud first feed.

Blighted, the same thing happened with Makena (first feed with me also). They came face to face once, and she shied away. The mouse came up on the side. A little later they were nose to nose, and she dispatched it quickly. I also have video:). It sure makes ya proud, doesn't it?:banana:

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Originally Posted by frankykeno

Quite honestly I've never had the situation arise that I had to intervene. Anytime one of them got a less than perfect hold on the rat, before the rat could really do any damage, it was dead. Realistically in most cases the constriction is so quick and so completely overwhelming to the rat's system that they just aren't doing much biting and chewing on a snake. You tend to see more problems when a snake isn't hunting a rodent and the rodent is improperly left in the enclosure live for extended periods of time, without food, etc. and goes after the snake or if the rodent is far, far too big for the snake so the snake can't get good and fast control of it.

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Tell that to my male live-only corn.. maybe he'll listen. -__-
When he eats he usually isn't very eager and takes a bit, but when he constricts.. it takes much longer and he doesn't get the hint that he should wrap more than 1/3 of his upper body around the mouse..
Half the time I think the mouse is going to get away. :[

Jess, from my very limited experience in colubrids (we own just one - a milksnake) I just don't think they are the efficient constrictors that our boas and ball pythons are. I'm much more conservative with live feeding our milksnake as I've noticed while she is able to constrict, she will also slam prey against things, physically squish prey or simply if the prey is small enough, eat it fully alive butt first (very gross). It's funny but of all the snakes in the house, the smallest cutest prettiest colored snake is the one I really don't like to watch eat. She's just not the efficient, quick predator the others are.