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

Monday night Monty started to explore his tank, Tuesday morning I found a processed mouse.
Figured Id try and see if he would take a mouse so soon after coming home. Big guy went to town on that mouse. everything went as swimmingly as possible.
Which brings me to a question: why do people seem to prefer frozen thawed? is it because they can be bought in bulk and kept frozen until they are needed? do some 'i dont want to see a cute little mouse die' morals come into play?

the convenience is definitely a biggie. as is the money saved. also, it's safer. a dead mouse isn't gonna turn around and bite your snake! :D

It certainly is simpler for some to just take a mouse out of the freezer than to have to go to the pet store on feeding day, especially with gas prices now days!

Some can't stomach watching their snake kill something.

There is some danger in feeding live, although it is almost nil when done correctly. There are plenty of rumors about how dangerous it is though.

Probably other reasons as well.

But if feeding live works for you and your snake, then go for it! Just make sure you know how to do it correctly so there is no unnecessary danger for your snake. One sentence summary of the most important thing: don't leave a live mouse or rat unattended with your BP.

Congrats!

There are a few good reasons for feeding F/T, they dont bite the snake, they are cheaper than live, and you can have a ton of them in the freezer. Feeding day is less work if you don't have to go get rats from a store.

Richard

totally pros and cons I like to have cheap frozen feeders but when you defrost and your snake refuses to eat it ti is a totally waste of money were as if it is live and not eaten no biggy save it for next time plus I hate defrosting takes forever and I have found the only snakes that are totally for f/t are my corns all my balls look at me like are you crazy I am not eating that thing its not moveing
some people are not for feeding live because of the poor mouse or rat but truthfully everything has to eat and one way or another they are dieing to feed the snake I figure the snake sould be aloud to do it itsself

I feed mostly F/T, it is cheaper when you have multiple snakes to feed. I also like the fact that if the snake doesnt want to eat right at the moment Im offering the prey I can leave it in the enclosure all night and I dont have to worry if my snake is being attacked. Most of the time the prey is gone in the morning.
I also have three females that were fed F/T since birth somtimes they dont even constrict so I dont trust them to eat live without getting hurt...

Honestly, I become instantly attached to anything alive. I get a mouse and I spend more than half a second with it and I'm going to want to keep it. I don't feel bad about my snake eating mice, because that is what they do, but I personally get attached to the lil mouse and want to keep him. For me, its just simpler to use f/t and Stan takes his food instantly and has never missed a meal so he doesn't seem to mind.

I feed f/t to all but one snake. I only have a total of 16 snakes and so it really isn't worth it to me to start keeping and breeding rats.

If I lived near to a supplier of live rats, I'd probably visit them each week, or even monthly, and feed live. But, alas... :(

The cost of feeding f/t is only 25% the cost of feeding live for me. Not to mention the convenience of storing them in the freezer and not having to either go to the store to buy them or to raise them.

Cheaper..
It's also more convenient. No matter how hard I try, I can't get my breeding ASFs at the right size for feeding time and with my smaller snakes, live hoppers aren't going to stay hoppers for more than two weeks.

one of the things that got me wanting a python was how awsome it is to see the nature of the hunt.sure i have had a few bites,thankfully nothing major and until there is something major i will continue with live.heh,i have to admit as well i like feeding by hand.even though i know wats comming it still sends the heartbeat soaring wich is good for ya,lol.

What's interesting on this particular forum, when we've had polls in the past on live vs f/t, we've had more live feeders than those who feed f/t - or pretty darn close to even. I'll see if I can't dig some of those up.

I've personally never fed f/t myself, I've always been a live feeder and still am today for my entire collection.

Here we go:

http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...ight=live+feed

http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...highlight=Live

http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...highlight=Live

Thanks for all your input! I'll stay with live mice, I only have one snake(as of now) and F/t seem more for the breeder or keepers that have many snakes. Mine has been on live since it was hatched so I'll just continue, it will work best.

I think you may find it the other way around. I don't think breeders with lots of snakes have the time to feed frozen.

Biggest pro: Size. Rodents grow fast, as anyone who breeds their own food knows. Say you have 5 snakes and two are adult BPs. Those adult BPs are on small rats, but rats get bigger than small fast! F/T is a way to keep prey items at the size your snake needs them to be.
In addition are the cost benefits to someone with more than 2 but less than 20 snakes. Maybe not enough to start rodent breeding, but certainly too many to buy food for every week at the shop!
And of course, for some there's the safety factor that dead rodents can't bite. Maybe they have a snake that was bitten by its food early in life and is now afraid of live prey.

I myself am trying to switch everyone to FT since I have 11 snakes, breed my own rodents, and can't drive. Getting to the store is a 30min bus ride to get a size I don't have or PK rats for my two big girls. Being able to just get the food from the freezer and thaw it out is so much easier. Currently, my three little corn girls and my biggest female BP are taking FT regularly, which is great because they're the ones that take rodents that don't stay the size they need for long (fuzzy and hopper mice and small rats). Now if only my other big girl and the smaller BPs would take it...(no luck yet with the het girl).

I used to say I would never feed other than live. Then I said 'pre-killed only!'. Now...I feed PK and FT and wish everyone would switch between both equally like my corns do...

Sorry for the novel, there. :D

Congrats on the first feeding. I fed mine for the first time on Monday. She was fed live at the breeder's so I gave her live. The process went by without a hitch, but I was nervous for her the whole time. I've seen the pictures of what mice/rats can do to snakes. I figure I'll try to switch her to f/t after a few feedings with me. I know they say that if it's done right feeding live is just as safe, but I don't think I can buy that just yet.

I found out the more snakes you have, the more trouble it is to feed FT. I breed my own feeders now, and once I get the rest of my snakes, I will hopefully be feeding live totally!

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.

Well I myself am new to snakes all around. I love my ball python, just wish he would come out of his hide more haha. But anyways, I like to feed live food, mainly because of the way I look at the situation, Im home everyday, mostly all day, I dont mind the 15 minute drive on feeding day. If he doesnt eat, save for later, just need a little rodent feed, also....I feel that feeding live is more natural, to the snake, and the way of life. Its like a farmer raising pigs just to eat himself. He kills it, cleans it, eats it. Sorry if this reply sounds stupid, but its just my 2 cents. Also, to me, its intriging to watch my BP eat live food and in my opinion you can learn alot more from your snake feeding live, over frozen.

Also, like I said, im new to snakes, but I have read alot. I think if u have alot of snakes, it would be better to feed live, mainly because you can breed your own, it can get expensive...but its less stressful and its just easier, no thawings, prep time...w/e ..., but there is always a chance that your snake will get bit, but I have raised rats in the past, not for feeders, but just to keep. Most rats are not aggresive towards anyone or any animal unless provoked, hell...I have had a rat sit on top of my BP for 15 minutes doing nothing but cleaning himself, until Randy got ticked off and rapped him up.

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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.

I have noticed the same with my 5 corns. Not one of them is truly good at dispatching prey, so I give them PK or FT. The PK is often still twitching, which still engages their hunting desires... you might try that with yours if you haven't already. :) I just do NOT trust these guys with live prey.

And yes, I used to offer them live when I first got my oldest boys. :)

I feed my pythons live and my colubrids FT. My colubrids just really suck at killing rodents.

But I get a better feed response feeding live to my BPs.

I have no illusions that one is more natural than the other, and I do not romanticize it. I just feed what works, and what keeps my snakes feeding with consistency.

I breed my own feeders, and my breeding rats are pets as much as my non-breeding rats are.

I can be amazed at my rodents, and adore them, but ultimately my snakes are my priority and I do not hesitate to feed off even the sweetest and cutest pups.

Well, since most of my collection consist of hognose, f/t is mandatory. Out of 70 animals (hoggies, bp's, kings, corns, grey rats, and one milk) all but 6 are on f/t. One corn and 5 BP.s, two of which are babies. I do have three breeding colonies going for those stubborn feeders and the neonate western hoggies that are particulary stubborn.

i dont understand how they are cheaper. True, you can get them for less than the pet store, but once you figure in the ridiculous shipping price, it all equals out to purchasing at the feed stores.

It's important to remember that feeding live is a learning process for the snake too. I have swiched over all my snakes to live and some "got it" sooner than others. Of course, they are all great hunters now.

But they are all different. One female BP (Lucy) is so good at striking and killing I never worry about her. She will kill anything in her tub before it hits the floor. And, I can't even watch my large corn snake eat, kind of like a WWF Cage match!!! If I have a particularly nervous mouse or rat I just make sure it goes in with one of my best hunters.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Blightedchemist

Monday night Monty started to explore his tank, Tuesday morning I found a processed mouse.
Figured Id try and see if he would take a mouse so soon after coming home. Big guy went to town on that mouse. everything went as swimmingly as possible.
Which brings me to a question: why do people seem to prefer frozen thawed? is it because they can be bought in bulk and kept frozen until they are needed? do some 'i dont want to see a cute little mouse die' morals come into play?

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No cute lil mouse for mine. Mine takes LARGE rats w/ no prob. lol. I tried one f/t and it took intirely to long for him to get it. HE much prefers something HOT and on the MOVE. lol. But if u don't like seeing a rodent stranggled and eattin fresh then yes...... Money def. go f/t cause you can buy in bulk which saves you money and they are always there. Just tell your friends that they are in there so when they go to get ice they don't freak! lol Hope this helped.-Ray