What is your opinion on LIVE feeding?

I think its just life. Some owners choose to feed live, and sometimes, the snake won't eat dead prey. I have seen tons of comments from people on youtube saying "I hope your snake dies for eating that poor wittle wabbit". Uhm, what? So, the snake should die, for doing what its supposed to do. Wow.
:O

It happens in the wild, its going to happen in their enclosures.

I personally feed frozen/thawed or fresh killed, but thats only because I've had personal trouble with live rodents. Thats just me though. I'm not preaching to anybody to not feed live. If one of my future snakes refuses to eat frozen/thawed or fresh killed, so be it, I'll feed them live.

To me, its no big deal. I mean, the carnivorous people are eating dead animals right? The snake is simply killing its food and eating it, just like we do. The people on youtube don't want to see snake feedings, they don't have to search the stuff up.

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Originally Posted by Bellabob

I think its just life. Some owners choose to feed live, and sometimes, the snake won't eat dead prey. I have seen tons of comments from people on youtube saying "I hope your snake dies for eating that poor wittle wabbit". Uhm, what? So, the snake should die, for doing what its supposed to do. Wow.
:O

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You know what i tell people like that.The day i see a wild snake roll up to a snake fast food joint and ask for a frozen rat burger is the day i will stop feeding my snakes live :P.It normaly shuts them up :8:

I personnally like it since it fast and simple with my ever growing collection. ( i not worried if there any type of power outage with the rodents ( like i do when I got frozen) and such.

My problem is keeping enough on hand to feed everyone at once of the proper size.

I am looking at needing right now alone every week 16 medium rats, 10-14 mice ( i got 2 bps that only eating mice and they have to be alive)
This runs me at least about 100 bucks a week ( if everyone eats every week) wit hth live I just pick out and toss in ( most the tiem the next thingI hear is the thud of the snake grabbing the rodent so I know who eating.

Live and F/T are equal in my book. Feeding live mice is easy because I just drop them in; on the other hand I have to revolve around the store's hours who I buy them from, and make the drive there and back.
Feeding F/T is easy since I can do it when I want, but it takes a while to thaw out, and some of my snakes won't eat it. :/
So they are both ok with me.

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Originally Posted by Bellabob

I think its just life. Some owners choose to feed live, and sometimes, the snake won't eat dead prey. I have seen tons of comments from people on youtube saying "I hope your snake dies for eating that poor wittle wabbit". Uhm, what? So, the snake should die, for doing what its supposed to do. Wow.
:O

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Is it wrong that I saw a baby bunny today, and only thought of it's nutritional value?:rofl:

I serve both live, and F/T here, and they both work. As long as my snakes are getting what they need, I am good with it. I even have luck switching back and forth on some. It all depends on what I have available.

To be honest there is no love loss between me and mice....not a fan of them. I do feed live and will continue to. I have some that like the hunt and some that prefer for me to hold it for them. Not dangerous to the snake as long as you monitor it. Now with that being said...I do like rats so I feel a little bad but its not like I don't eat steak so....:rolleyes:

The reason why live feeding gets such a bad rap is because so many morons leave rats in with snakes overnight. That is asking for serious trouble, and that's how snakes get so severely injured. With suprevised feedings of appropriately sized rodents, it's not a problem. I've had a live rodent take a bite out of my snakes several times. If the snake doesn't kill it at that point I remove it. One of my BPs even bled a bit once, but with clean substrate and a little neosporin, she was completely healed within the week.

Personally, I feed f/t because it's cheap, can be purchased in bulk, and does not require feeding and watering. But that's just me. I'm not opposed to supervised live feedings.

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Originally Posted by Crazy4Herps

The reason why live feeding gets such a bad rap is because so many morons leave rats in with snakes overnight.

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I thought it was the jillions of youtube videos of live rat feedings with the owner snickering in the background and heavy metal music or some such getting off on the rat's misfortune... or something like that.
:cool:

Have no problem with feeding live but I've stuck with F/T for convenience. I don't want to worry about raising rats just because my ball might not be hungry whenever I decide to feed her.

A friend of mine recently ended up becoming a caretaker of a madagascar cockroach, but only because it's been hiding and her tarantula hasn't bothered eating it yet.