A Vent... Feeding Live

[Stormyva]

I am right there with you watching the lion chase down the antelope.. and yes it is a really cool thing to see a snake stalk a rat in the cage. I loved to watch my dumerils hunt down and kill a mouse. At the same time I knew that in the best interest of the snake I needed to get it to F/T. After observing how she hunted the mouse I have learned how she likes to have her food offered and have managed to duplicate it and have her take f/t several times now. I was even ready to throw in the towel on converting her, but everybody kept telling me be patient. They said that there is not a snake out there that cant be converted. They were right.... after three years of live with her previous owner and 5 months of hard work from me she is not eating f/t.
Long story short... the snakes we all have are captive snakes. There are a lot of "Advantages" that we as captive keepers can offer to the snakes that they do not have in the wild. In captivity a snake can live for 30+ years in the wild it is only a fraction of that. Why is that, because we provide them with ideal temps and humidity, ideal breeding situations, ideal hiding spots, and most of all ideal and safe feeding situations and prey items. If your snake hasnt taken F/T yet keep trying there are hundreds of tricks out there to make it work.
In addition to this hobby being for our enjoyment it is also about giving our snakes the best possible living situation and even more important is promoting snakes and reptiles not as the negative, evil, thing that most of society views them as.

[elevatethis]

I think we need to adjust the phrases we use on here. UNSUPERVISED live feeding is negligent and you don't deserve to keep your snakes if you just throw a live rodent in with a snake and walk away. However, some snakes are just picky, esp ball pythons, and live feeding is the only option to keep the snake alive. At this point, no one should look down on any keeper for supervised live feedings. Sure, its much riskier, but it is the nature of the beast. No pun intended.

[ffollett]

I think some of the time its people being to lazy or bored to sit there and watch the snake. I know we have some that take forever to even show interest in the rat. Now take someone who has no knowledge of snakes but owns 6 of them because they are "cool". You know the kind a BP in a 10 gal tank with a hot rock. They throw a rat in each cage to feed them and walk off because the snake isn't interested right away and hey thats what they did when they were eating pinkie or fuzzy rats.
We have had some live rats join the land of the frozen rat pops because they showed the smallest hint of agression towards one of our snakes. Luckily most of them have converted to f/t but we still have a couple young ones that still want only live.

[gozetec02]

I agree with Brad. It takes hours for a rodent to do that much damage to a snake. And it takes pure neglegence on the part of the keeper to not supervise a live feeding. The subject of feeding live or dead is just about beat to death, no pun intended. As keepers it is up to us to keep our pets safe. People like to see their snakes eat just like they are in the wild, news flash, they are not in the wild and they will never again be in the wild. Snakes that are captive depend on instinct to feed and they kind of learn as they go and get better at it as they get older.

Getting back to keeper responsibility. Everyone is ultimately responsible for their own snakes. A snake is a beautiful creatures with all kinds of colors and patterns and iridescence in thier skin. If a snake gets attacked by rodent and get horribly wounded which can get infected and lead to horrible scars. And all because the owner wanted to see how cool it is to see their snake kill a rodent.

It really affects me when i hear that people feed live. If someone has to feed live and can't get their snake to switch to at lease fresh dead, which i feed my snakes, then they are not trying very hard.

[hhw]

One thing I've found very important is to heat the mouse up to a good temperature. For me, the easiest way to thaw out a mouse is to have it in the fish bag I get it in from the pet store, and hang the bag over the back of a computer. The hot air blowing out the power supply gets the mouse thawed much quicker (~2-3 hours thoroughly thawed, as opposed to about 5-6 on a heat pad), and heats it to just about the right temperature (maybe a few degrees high, but not too much). I also find that my BP will come right up to the mouse, but will not strike unless I dangle it at least once, just for some movement, but right at the very first jerk, it hits it right away.

When I first tried to switch, I was pretty worried I'd have a difficult time because the breeder I got my BP from hadn't been able to do it and he was already 8 months old when I got him. I had planned out this elaborate long-term process, expecting to have to go to F/K first, but they ran out of live mice at the pet store and I bought frozen instead, and sure enough, my BP took it the very first time.

Anyway, to anyone who hasn't managed to get your BP's on F/T, just keep trying. I think making sure it's warm enough may be the key. Just make sure if you're doing the computer method like I do, keep the bag hanging off away from the back of the computer so that it doesn't block the ventilation out of the power supply, and so it doesn't get too hot.

[wolfman38]

I agree with y'all that feeding f/t is the best way to feed your snake. I personally feed my corn with f/t. And I have tried so many times to get Zeus to eat a f/t or even a f/k that I quite counting all the rats I have killed in process of getting him to switch (and money wasted). I have tried every way imagineable(sp) to get him to take a f/k. I have even tried dangling a live rat to mimic what it would look like for a f/k one. All he does is look at me like "What am I suppose to do with this?". You name it I have tried it get him converted over to f/k. This why I feed live, but when I do get ready to feed him. I make sure that he is interested in feeding before even removing the rat from it's cage. If I see that he is not ready to feed at that time, I will not even take the rat out. If he is ready to feed, I make sure that he sees the rat before even dropping it in the cage this way he knows it is there before the rat knows Zeus is there. I will watch the entire process for safety sake. The only time I leave him alone is when he begins to consume his food.

I do agree that f/k or f/t is best, but yes there are snakes that just will absolutely refuse to eat anything but live. Now if you still think that I am immature for feeding live then that is your opinion, and you are entitled to one. But believe me that I have tried every trick in the book to convert Zeus to no success.

[Marla]

That poor boa! I am fortunate that I have been able to get all of my snakes switched to eating f/t, even the one who ate live for four years in someone else's care. Feeding live is absolutely inferior to feeding pre-killed or f/t prey, but it is still superior to not feeding successfully at all. If you are a responsible keeper and supervise the feeding process all the way through, or at least until swallowing has started, feeding live is a reasonable option if it is what works best for your given situation.

By the way, Raj, congratulations! Maybe Merry will tell Pippin about the joys of p/k and get him to switch over for you.