Live food...why? Honestly & with facts!

[Evenstar]

I much prefer f/t. However, my adult female BP, Ella, who has always been a powerhouse feeder on f/t since we got her 2 years ago, decided last year to be finicky about her f/t. She went 4 months of refusing f/t and only ate maybe 2 meals total in all that time. SO I finally broke down and offered her a live mouse because I was frankly starting to get worried (even though she really never did drop weight).

Ironically, it took her almost 30min to finally eat that first live mouse. But she ate her f/t perfectly the following week! So for awhile, I alternated giving her live and f/t that spring and she was sort of on again off again with her food but usually ate pretty well. Then in August, she starting refusing more than she was eating again. She ate a f/t mouse only 2 times in 2 months. The first of October I broke down again and got a couple live mice. BAM! She was a piggy again. So I've kept her on live for the last 2 months and she's eaten every meal so far.

I would LIKE to get her back on f/t. But I've been a chicken about trying it, lol. I would also like to get her on rats, but I'm even more nervous about trying that. I know I shouldn't be, but I'm a very motherly and nuturing person so I can't help but worry about her when she doesn't eat. I would rather feed her 2-3 live mice each week and have her eat than have her keep refusing f/t.

I feel that feeding her live is safe because I am extremely dilligent about watching out for her when she eats. I will NOT leave a live rodent in with her even for a just a few minutes. She's either going to eat it right away, or out it comes. I tail feed so each rodent is offered to her by me and I am right there to watch her strike and constrict in case there should be a problem. But for me, there is no enjoyment in watching her kill her prey. I have no moral or ethical problem with feeding live, but the reason I do it is simply because that's what works for her right now. All my other snakes happily eat f/t and I'm very thankful for that....

I've never had her even come close to being bitten, but if Ella were to be injured by a rodent, I would evaluate how serious the bite was and immediately take her to the vet if it was that serious. A minor bite I would keep clean and use an anitbiotic ointment and keep a very careful eye on it. Rodent bites are nasty and not to be trifled with so I wouldn't hesitate to take her to the vet if I thought it was necessary. But I think most bites happen when the rodent is left unsupervised in the snake's enclosure which will not happen with Ella.

Sorry for the long post. That turned out to be more of a novel than I'd intended.....

[Reakt20]

I've just recently switched my snakes over to f/t. everyone has taken one at least once but they dont take them all the time, in which case, i feed them live and they strike. you can always (this might seem mean to some people) flick the mouse or rat in the head really hard with your index finger and knock them out if they start gnawing on your snakes' coils. i've had to do it a couple of times and it saved a couple snakes from a potential open wound. i would prefer to feed all f/t but sometimes its easier and faster to feed live. its pretty much a guaranteed strike with any of my snakes.

[zmd0827]

I didn't go through everyone's comments, and I guess i should have... Computer's running on borrowed time... Where's my charger?

Anyways, through the rescue I run, we get a ton of animals that just don't transition, even though we do our best to transition them ourselves.

Take for instance this Savvy we got in. He's great! Huffy puffy, but never really bite or tail-whipped. He lived in a car for three weeks, along with 20 other reptiles, because his owner was evicted for reptiles and she didn't want to surrender them until they all started to die.

He was only being fed live, I can understand that it's pretty hard to keep a rat frozen in a car...

But that's what he's been his entire life, and he has been difficult to switch over. We've had him for a month and tried and tried and tried, through different methods. Chicken stock, you name it, we tried it! We've only succeeded in getting him to take hard-boiled eggs, but that can't be his entire diet.

And in other instances, like the sand viper... Just won't take frozen thawed. In fact, she has this tendency as a hatchling, to bite into the pinkie (live), let it die, then eat it a solid 10 hours later.

We just get some finicky eaters. But hey, we do our best to switch over in our rescue, and some just don't take to it. And with numbers exceeding 50, usually near 70 animals, we just can't take our sweet time to get them all switched over.

But on a positive note, my personal female retic is eating frozen, as is my normal female het. granite ball.

Food for thought,

ZMD.

[RichsBallPythons]

Sav monitors shouldnt be fed rodents period,

[wolfy-hound]

I feed live for my convience.

I always tell people that FT is safer and preferred. But with 30+ snakes, thawing 30 rats out and hoping everyone eats FT is a pain. Doing the zombie rat dance for a snake is no big deal, but doing it for 30+ snakes is a pain.

If you have a ton of leftovers, what next? Throw them all out and waste them? I have monitors, but I can't feed a ton of rodents to them. Feed the snakes in staggered feeding? Again, it's a pain, since then I've got to keep a staggered feeding schedule that will change EVERY feeding day if someone refuses and I give that rodent to someone else.

I've never ever 'enjoyed' watching a animal die. Not when I butchered my own animals for food, not when I've hunted and not when I feed my snakes. It doesn't gross me out or make me feel 'immoral' in any way. It's just part of life. I watch the snakes to make sure the rats don't harm them. If a rat isn't struck just right, I can interfere if it attempts to bite. Is that foolproof? Of course not. There's a possibility the snake could get bitten.

But then, pythons are pretty tought, and even if a rat does get struck poorly and take a few extra seconds to die, they can't automatically bite your python's head off. It's rare to get a injury from a feeding, as opposed to a unsupervised rodent in a snake's bin for days.

FT is always the safe bet. But between snakes that refuse to eat FT, the convienance of live esp for those of us breeding our own, and the mydrid number of other reasons, there's always probably going to be some live feeders.

[jbean7916]

I feed live because I have picky eaters and it's easier for me to get live and keep them if they don't eat. I can't afford to toss out rats every time my normal male decides he's not hungry

[Missy King]

well, i do get the "what if they don't eat" thing. We have 11 snakes, and when one won't eat, sometimes someone else will...and if not (or it's the wrong size) then we refreeze. If it's the right size that someone else may eat it...sometimes with the pythons or the dumeril's boas i'll leave it out over night, and most of the time they eat it...if not, it's nice and stinky for my "garbage disposal" snakes to eat it *lol*

I have only seen a snake's live feeding once...when i was at the pound, about to adopt the two balls they had. They had just put mice in to feed them (yup, a mouse for a 4 foot long ball python..they also had no water at all)...anyway...the first ball struck, and suffocated the mouse, and swallowed it down. The second was blind from eye cap build up, kept striking and missing, and when it did hit the mouse it got the butt...so when it wrapped around the mouse, the mouse bit and tore a scale off while i was watching. That snake was also too weak to kill the mouse (I named her Ribs, and at the time she weighed only a little more than a pound)...anyway, both those snakes are doing fine now...and i'm helping them recover. But that was the only life feed i've seen. It' looked really ineffective and it looks like just the slightest off bite and scales and blood fly.

But, they are rescues and both were dehydrated and undernourished.

Aha and in response to "it's more natural for them" and "they like the excitement" LOL
Okay so as an example, I have 4 snakes in-particular who have never had live food. Our girl ball python gets PLENTY excited for her dead rat ...LOL she is hilarious. She's so silly she wouldn't know what to do with something alive. A lot of the ones i have are preeeetty domesticated it seems. At least a couple of them actually strike. Our hognose, and our rescued corn snake just....start eating. It's actually pretty funny too.

I think i'm just pretty protective of my snakes. I'd be so worried the whole time they were striking and eating live food. I don't mind anything else eating live, since they can't get hurt. Oh and don't get me wrong...i'm an oddball girl. I've gone hunting with my dad, and even have a nice deer mount or two or three on his wall that he's proud of (the son he never had lol) but i would be so upset if my little snakey babies got bit or hurt.

There's a reptile show in January in Pamona, and i know i shouldn't go....but i do need supplies! And yeah maybe i'll be looking at snakes....maybe i'll find one....but i have to admit, that if they were eating live all the time it might be a turn off for me. It might depend on the snake, too though.

I suppose i might learn to feel different when i have like 30 snakes. Right now 11 is manageable for f/t lol

[Slashmaster]

I feed all my snakes live. Back when I had a couple snakes it might have been useful to feed F/T, but now it'd just be a major waste of money. I have some snakes that will turn their noses up at food for no apparent reason, and every time a snake does that, it means the food went to waste with F/T because I think re-heating F/T is kind of disgusting and unsafe. With live, I can put the rat back in a cage/habitat with food and water and it won't be "spoiled" - it'll be healthy and ready for next week.

I fed my snakes P/K for a while and feeding response went down. Live gives me the best feeding response among the babies and adults alike. Everyone gets watched until they kill their prey. When it comes to my spider male, who cannot do a head shot for the life of him, I will dangle it for him so he can get a head shot easier.

[KingPythons]

IMO and simple answer, they eat live in the wild so why not feed them live in captivity.

[purplemuffin]

Of course, in the wild they aren't in a newspaper lined tub. In the wild the rat has a chance to escape, and so does the snake if it doesn't want to eat. I still don't think feeding live is any more 'natural' unless the snake was given a total hunting experience.... Dangling/tossing in a rat in a box isn't the same, though I can see it's pros and cons.

Our male IS occasionally fed live, when he's being picky. Thankfully he's never been hurt. Came close a few times though!