Live vs. F/T

I know this has probably come up too many times to count, but I cant find the threads, so I apologize. My BP will be here next Wednesday and they guy I bought him from feeds live rats. Is live feeding really detrimental to their health? I know this is the way they would feed in the wild but I'm afraid of a rat hurting my BP.

This topic comes up so much. No, it is not necessary to feed live if you do not choose to. I have 8 ball pythons and 1 boa, and only one baby ball python has refused everything f/t and only eats live, all my others eat f/t without issue. I don't feed live for a few reasons, not that people don't successfully feed live with zero issues either. Feed f/t or pre killed if you choose, it has no effect in my experience in the snakes health.

You can try a f/t and if he refuses supervised live feedings is just fine. Keep a hook handy just in case the snake gets a bad strike. Just don't leave a live rodent in there if he does not hit on it in a short amount of time.

The first thing you need to think about is getting your new royal to eat once you have a few feedings in then you can think about switching. Give the little guy a chance to settle in before springing new things on him.

F/T is usually easier unless you plan on breeding rats which isn't really very practicle for a single snake. There is lots of debates around this but F/T will never bite your snake. It is always a chance no matter how careful you are with live. Supervised live feedings to start then try F/T and see how that goes.

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Originally Posted by kitedemon

The first thing you need to think about is getting your new royal to eat once you have a few feedings in then you can think about switching. Give the little guy a chance to settle in before springing new things on him.

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Agreed! Get them feeding regularly then try the switch. Half of my collection feed frozen and half feed live. I do not prefer one over the other and have yet to haveany complications when feeding live. My hatchlings feed live and my older snake are on F/T. The one thing I like about live is that when the meal is refused I can just toss it in a bin for next feeding, F/T is wasted unsless someone else decides the'd like a second meal.

I'm a live feeder, always have been. It's more convenient for me living in an apartment than f/t. And at this point, I really don't have an interest in thawing out 50+ rodents every week.

I've fed off over 10K live prey in the time I've been keeping snakes, and I've never had an injury, and have never intervened on behalf of the snake (with tongs, etc).

I advocate that each keeper feeds what they are most comfortable feeding and that their snake will eat. For me, it's live. :)

Feed what works for your animal, is readily available and is convenient for you.

It's all about knowing your options and feeding responsibly whether it's live or f/t

I mainly feed live, some get f/t since I sometimes get surplus when breeding rats.

Whatever works is what should be fed.

I prefer using live becouse the snakes prefer it and eat more of it. Just makes it easier to bulk up females before breeding season

I use to only feed my corn snake live, at the time I had one other ball python that ate f/t. I feed the corn snake f/t for the majority of its meals and live only as a "treat." One day the snake didn't get a decent strike on the mouse the mouse started biting the snake. I grabbed a large spoon which was close to me and had to break the mouses neck with the snake curled around it. It wasn't fun and I didn't like having doing it.

To each their own but in my opinion f/t is the way to go. You have people that have always feed live and never had a problem but then you always hear the horror stories or see the pics of snakes all messed up from being feed live. I now have 6 ball pythons 1 boa and 1 corn snake they all eat f/t. Now it wasn't the easiest thing to do to switch them to f/t but it can be done. My suggestion if the snake is over a year old don't offer live again. Give him a week to get use to his place offer him f/t if he doesn't take it leave it in his cage overnight. If the prey is still there when you wake up take it out throw it away and try again later. I do this on an every 4 day cycle till the rat or mouse is gone.

It does take time to switch though and you have to be keep to your guns, the snake will eat when hungry enough. If it is a hatchling then by all means feed it live but something defenseless like a rat pup its first couple of meals and then try to switch to f/t. one last tip i have found it to be easier to get them to take f/t when you do a couple of things. Make sure your meal is warm, ball pythons have heat pits and they can tell if the meal is live or not, simply by the temp they are registering. Scent the room, I let my f/t thaw out in a 5 gal bucket before feeding so the snakes smell the food and start to get ready to eat. And move the prey, I always use tongs to move the f/t prey around this helps them think it is live as suppose to just throwing a dead mouse in the tank.

I have had great success switching ball pythons with the methods listed above. All of my ball pythons came to me as live feeders, and all have been successfully switched. I hope this helps, in the end feed whatever is easiest and most feasible for you. I hope this hopes and good luck

live feeder here too. my only problems with it are that once the rat realizes the situation it becomes defensive & offering it more then once at that point has just led to it turning on my snake. she has yet to be bitten though cuz i'm always parked right in front of the cage with the doors somewhat open so i can get in & intervene if needed. typically my snake grabs the rat within the first minute the rat is put in but the minute she hesitates or turns away i take the rat out straight away.
the problem i'm having with refusals & live feeders is that the store owner of the place i buy my feeders from is getting to the point where he is no longer allowing me to bring in the rats my snake refuses, either for an exchange or just a return.
for those reasons i wish my girl would take f/t or even prekilled but she wont touch 'em if they're dead/dying. i swear its like she looks at me like
"hey! i did not kill that! dont expect me to eat it." :colbert:
good luck though with whatever method you choose. :gj:

my only problem with feeding live is that I don't breed feeders, I buy my feeders on feeding day. However my snakes will take to both live and F/T so normally what I do if they refuse is pre kill then freeze. I kinda like feeding my big girl abbus pre killed because she wont strike it she'll just take it and swallow it.

Both live and f/t have their dangers. Live is that the prey item can injure your snake. With f/t, you could feed an improperly warmed prey item and make your animal sick/regurge. Quite honestly, the safest thing to feed is pre-killed. Me? I feed what the snake will eat. In my case, I'm lucky to have a snake that will eat anything. Live, prekilled, ft.

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Originally Posted by pigfat

I know this has probably come up too many times to count, but I cant find the threads, so I apologize. My BP will be here next Wednesday and they guy I bought him from feeds live rats. Is live feeding really detrimental to their health? I know this is the way they would feed in the wild but I'm afraid of a rat hurting my BP.

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Feeding live Pros and Cons:

Pros -
1) Can get tricky eaters to feed
2) Easily accessible if you breed your own feeders

Cons -
1) Can be dangerous. Feeders have killed their potential predators before.
2) Expensive if you have to purchase retail feeders, and not always readily availabe

I feed frozen/thawed and have a freezer full of feeders. I order in bulk from Rodentpro.com, it's the most affordable way I've found to feed my animals outside of breeding my own animals (and add in a minimum wage time cost, and rodent pro still wins out).

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Originally Posted by benwallage9

You have people that have always feed live and never had a problem but then you always hear the horror stories or see the pics of snakes all messed up from being feed live.

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The majority of those badly injured snakes are from idiots who leave feeders in unsupervised for extended periods of time. We've actually got a female with bad scars from her previous owner who left feeders in with her.

We feed live with the exception of our younger corns, who we feed f/t because its convenient. All live feedings are supervised and we have yet to have a problem. Its all about being responsible.

mine only eats live, but i did get him to eat a stunned rat last feed:), ive had him for 5 years and he unfortunatly has been bit twice, nothing serious but ever since the first bite he wont take males or all white rats, he became picky. and ive offered him f/t at least 20+ times in his life, and he absolutly will not take. ever since the first bite i sit there with a pair of pliers in case i have to break the rats neck if he has my snake (thankfully i dont have to do it often)

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Originally Posted by AK907

The majority of those badly injured snakes are from idiots who leave feeders in unsupervised for extended periods of time. We've actually got a female with bad scars from her previous owner who left feeders in with her.

We feed live with the exception of our younger corns, who we feed f/t because its convenient. All live feedings are supervised and we have yet to have a problem. Its all about being responsible.

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I agree 1000% but like in my case i was watching the snake the whole time she just got a bad strike and now has a couple small scars from it. However, if I hadn't reacted the way I did when I did what other damage might have happened to her? My thing is what happens when someone sees this happen and doesn't know how to respond to the situation, or panics? Thats why I am suggestion this person feeds f/t, this is there first snake and until they get some experience under their belt i think f/t is the way to go.

I just got my BP about a week ago and fed her last night. I had no idea what shes eaten before because the store haddnt been able to feed her. I got her home and like I said about a week later she ate f/t with no fuss. my concern is she didnt coil it she just struck and down the hatch. Is that normal?

All my animals eat f/t. My husband won't allow me to breed my own rodents (and I'm not thrilled about the extra work involved, anyway) so for me ordering vast quantities of f/t online has turned out to be far cheaper than buying individual f/t or live locally.

Sometimes it's work switching the animals. I've had animals that didn't eat for months after arriving, and then stopped eating randomly a few months later and had to go back on live. At some level, I just want to see these guys eat SOMETHING, anything. I had to leave my het lavender male on live for most of a year, and he regressed back from f/t several times before it finally stuck. And THEN he would only eat f/t MICE, and it's taken me another year to get him on rats...

But IF your animal arrives with an appetite, then this is a great time of year to switch. Most of my animals are eating voraciously right now, building up weight for the winter breeding season. I'm using that appetite to switch my mousers over to rats, and it's a good time for switching live eaters over f/t.

If your animal arrives and it won't eat? The main thing is finding something it actually does want to eat. If you have a picky eater, you might have to feed live all winter and wait until the appetite returns again before you can change the diet.

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Originally Posted by Ogre

I just got my BP about a week ago and fed her last night. I had no idea what shes eaten before because the store haddnt been able to feed her. I got her home and like I said about a week later she ate f/t with no fuss. my concern is she didnt coil it she just struck and down the hatch. Is that normal?

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Ya it happens she had just lost the instinct to coil. My corn does it sometimes along with my pin. It like they know its already dead so why bother coiling lol. Just don't try live with her, it could turn out nasty

like rperry03 said if F/T wont work supervised feeding is the only other option.

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Originally Posted by benwallage9

Ya it happens she had just lost the instinct to coil. My corn does it sometimes along with my pin. It like they know its already dead so why bother coiling lol. Just don't try live with her, it could turn out nasty

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yeah thats what I thought, just wanted to make sure and if i ever do try live i will def knock the sucker out. but its all f/t from here on out.

There is no difference at all in the health of your animal feeding frozen or live. Yes there are plenty of horror stories about rat bites but those cases are because people dont pay attention. A rat is not going to go right in and attack a snake. If its kept in there too long then thats when problems happen. If your worried about it then thump the rodent first. Frozen is convienant if you only have a few animals. I dont have the time to defrost a ton of rodents every week to feed my collection so i breed my own rats so live is the way to go for me. Now i do take percautions when im feeding jumbo rats to my huge girls but i dont think anyone wants to hear those percautions lol

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Originally Posted by benwallage9

Ya it happens she had just lost the instinct to coil. My corn does it sometimes along with my pin. It like they know its already dead so why bother coiling lol. Just don't try live with her, it could turn out nasty

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They don't lose their instinct to coil. If presented with life prey, they would coil. One of my snakes was a rescue fed f/t by its previous owner. The first live meal with me it hit hard, swift and accurate.

All my bp's were fed live before i bought them...got them let settle for a week and they had no problem with f/t. Something I read somewhere is that if you leave live in the enclosure put food for it in the enclosure they get hungry rather quickly and although rare (so i've been told) it could get so hungry that it nibbles on your bp. Always supervise with live.

I lost a large Red tailed Boa to a large rat, it tried to swallow the rat while it was still alive and had her throat ripped out. That's not a major concern with bp's, but some types of snakes will eat their prey while its still alive.

All of mine take F/T. Never had a problem so far.

I'm feeding live.
I haven't tried F/T yet just because it seems like more work to go drive out 30 mins +/- to the only petco with nice variety in their F/T mice... I'd need adults and don't really want to buy 6 FT mice for $12(though I'm already paying $2.15 a mouse live...)
Plus it just seems easier to go out to the petstore about 20 minutes away on feeding day, pick up a live mouse, and go home and feed. I always supervise. It doesn't take long, but I have to, and I have only one snake. When I feed her, I hold the mouse by the base of the tail with my tongs and dangle it near Kallista and she normally gets a good strike. The one I fed her yesterday she didn't quite get it's head and it was trying to bite her side I think so I put my thick wooden skewer in it's mouth and I could feel it biting that. She killed it and it took her forever to eat it, but it was a little big. But the others I have fed her seem too small(she looks like she wants more. After this one she didn't. XD)

But I have to supervise the whole feeding anyway after she kills it since I take out her hides and water dish and move the tub off the shelf on the desk she's on so I can watch better.
And so afterwards I have to put everything back in and put her tub back up.

It sounds like a lot of work, but it doesn't take much more than 10 minutes and it works for me.
There's no way I'm not supervising her feeding time. Plus, I think it's cool to watch them eat. :3