How Frequently Do You Feed Your BPs?

[SoCaliSon]

To answer the thread question I feed every Friday... and they eat readily.

To put in my two cents about the Live vs. F/T...

I am not going to knock anyones tried and true methods of feeding... It is your choice on how you want to feed the snake. This is only my opinion ... I personally feed Stunned Live. I think the only reason F/T exists is for the conveniece of the human and not for the benefit of the snake. I am going to to split this into a couple key points.

1. Nature designed our snakes to hunt and kill live prey. Snakes are not scavengers. Maybe it happens but I have never heard of a wild snake ingesting something that was dead when they found it. It is one of my snakes primal intinctual behaviors to find that warm little animal... attack, constrict them and swallow them. I personally think it is borderline cruel to keep a captive snake and neglect them of this behavior. When a snake stops contricting before it eats... That is sad, as it is just loosing touch with it's natural behaviors.

This is my Favorite point to make on this issue...
What if we forced you to eat Mushed up food through a straw for the rest of your life because there was a danger of you chipping a tooth on a bone. No more chewing cause it's dangerous... Even though that is what we have our teeth for! Eventually our jaw muscles would turn incredibly weak. Then if we ever wanted to use our teeth again they would be almost useless becasue your jaws muscles are worthless. A snake contricting it's food is like us chewing... It's how they were designed to do it. Don't neglect them of chewing their food!

You are forcing your snake to feed in an unnatural way until that is all he used to. Not Good. It is extremely rare for a snake to take F/T on the first try because snakes are not built to recognize dead things as prey... I hate saying it like this but sadly this is what happens... The owner decides F/T is the more convenient way to go (You can easily feed a freshly killed or stunned mouse to the snake... Why crappy frozen stuff???... Becasue it's convenient for YOU)... Then they start trying to feed F/T and most of the time the only way to get a snake to take it is to let it starve until it decides that it will take the F/T. I know "Starve" sounds bad; But a natural predator is only going to take a dead prey item if it is tricked to think that it is alive, or is starving and takes it as a last resort.

2. My Snakes Deserve the Freshems'!!! I looked and looked but I can't find the article I was reding on this. But in a live rat everything is as fresh as could be. The Brain Fluids, Bone Marrow, Oxygenation Level in the blood... are all very good for your snake. All of these things are gone or degraded in F/T. Snakes can survive on F/T... and whether or not you can tell a difference in health on one fed F/T vs Live is very hard to tell, you would have to consider behavior as well as vitamin and nutrient levels. Personally if you ask me the healthier snake would be the one can best exercise their natural instictual behaviors without an issue. A snake fed F/T for years would probably have no idea how to handle a live prey item as he has not been allowed to feed that way... The way nature intended them to eat.

3. Humane? C'mon this is the oldest animal activity on earth... Animals eat eachother... All the way down to Bacterial level... In order for one life to live... something else must die. It works that way for every living organism on earth. This is why rodents have so many babies... Becuase they serve as such a vital part in the food chain feeding larger predators. The only possible down side for the snake that I could possibly think of from feeding live would be the risk of possible injury from defensive prey. 99 out of 100 times if you are feeding the proper sized prey item to a healthy hungry snake... There will be no injury. There will always be that risk though which is a little to big for some... Maybe even me...

So considering all of the above... I just take the paper bag and give it a good smack on the ground before I dump them in. The rat is alive, warm and moving... Just has the wits knocked out... And there is virtually no risk of him trying to fight back.

[rabernet]

I feed f/t. The python tends to be less aggressive and it's safer for the snake. She doesn't even constrict, she knows what she's getting and she's greatful for it. F/t is more humane. Feeding live also gives us herps a bad rep with the general public. When the public starts getting scared, they start proposing bans. You really should rethink your purpose for owning a snake if you got it for the entertainment value. A starving dog could eat a cat and get plenty of nutrition that way, but are you going to stop feeding it dog food? No, b/c no one should be entertained by a creature getting slaughtered.

While I don't advocate feeding live for the entertainment value, I DO feed live and have never fed anything other than live. I also do not stun. I've got over 3000 live prey fed off under my belt, and I've never experienced an injury to any of my snakes. And if I even had ONE injury, that would make the real risk less than 1%, .0003% to be exact.

About half of our members here feed live (at least those who have responded to past polls), as do many respected ball python breeders. Feeding live is only dangerous when done incorrectly (feeding prey that's far too large for example - an adult really only needs small/small rats, not medium or large, people leaving live in overnight, etc)

We advocate each keeper feeding what works best for them - for me, it's live.

[rabernet]

I've got the same deal with mine. She's 21" & 140g now. She was 19.5" & 120g when I got her 3 weeks ago. She's not obese, but she'll down 2 fuzzies and she's on the prowl again by day 3. I took her to the vet for her intial (general) checkup and the vet said she's pretty healthy but I could bump her up to two feedings a week. Now I feed her 2 fuzzies every 3-4 days. She's in her first shed right now.

Fuzzy mice or rats? A newly hatched ball python can take a hopper mouse (eyes and ears just opened) as their first meal. I feed babies either large rat fuzzies or mouse hoppers about every five days.

[missi182]

To answer the thread question I feed every Friday... and they eat readily.

To put in my two cents about the Live vs. F/T...
I am not going to knock anyones tried and true methods of feeding... It is your choice on how you want to feed the snake. This is only my opinion ... I personally feed Stunned Live. I think the only reason F/T exists is for the conveniece of the human and not for the benefit of the snake. I am going to to split this into a couple key points.


This is my Favorite point to make on this issue...
What if we forced you to eat Mushed up food through a straw for the rest of your life because there was a danger of you chipping a tooth on a bone. No more chewing cause it's dangerous... Even though that is what we have our teeth for! Eventually our jaw muscles would turn incredibly weak. Then if we ever wanted to use our teeth again they would be almost useless becasue your jaws muscles are worthless. A snake constricting it's food is like us chewing... It's how they were designed to do it. Don't neglect them of chewing their food!

I appreciate your opinion and would like to agree with you, but honestly I do not believe my bp even knows the f/t I feed him are dead. My bp has been fed both live and f/t prey and has never rejected either. I would also like to say that in no way are you "forcing" your snake to eat when feeding f/t, unless you are using hemostats to force-feed which is a whole different issue.

And on the topic of constriction compared to chewing, well my bp strikes and constricts for 10 minutes every feed, so I don't see what activity he may be lacking from eating f/t.

I feed f/t because to keep live mice at my house is not an option because I have severe allergies. Besides that, I do not want to keep them, and to pick one up every week would be silly because I am in the country and would have to drive 45 minutes to get live mice. I am also not bashing anyones opinions and totally agree with those who choose to feed live, but don't jump the gun on those that feed f/t.

[sneakerpro]

My BP Slyder is still quite young, and takes one live adult mouse every 5 days. I was trying to feed smaller F/T prey and he didn't want anything to do with them.

[FIREball]

I feed every 6 days. Since I work a 24hr on 48hr off work schedule a 7 day cycle doesn't work for me since I would be at work on feeding day once every three weeks.

[recycling goddess]

That may be, but since no one has done a study on the nutritional requirements of ball pythons, that information is rendered meaningless in terms of what is better for your snake. As long as your snake is eating, growing, shedding and defecating on what you feed it - it's all good.

i totally hear you robin but... isn't a snake out in the wild eating live? isn't as close to nature best?

personally i choose to feed live because it's as close as i can get to giving my snake something to fuel it's natural instincts while still living in my home, in a bin.

another thing i'd love to toss in here... i believe feeding rats or mice you have grown and fed yourself can be better, because you know what they are eating. if you are feeding a healthy balanced varied diet... and you keep them in optimal conditions... then you can feel good about what you are giving your snake.

just my two cents...

[rabernet]

i totally hear you robin but... isn't a snake out in the wild eating live? isn't as close to nature best?

Yes it is. However, there are keepers that are unable to feed live (UK members for example). I do not believe that their animals are any less healthy than those feeding live.

Now remember, I'm a live feeder, but I don't think anyone can conclusively say that live is healthier nutrition wise than f/t, nor can they make conclusively say that rats are better than mice.

[SoCaliSon]

I appreciate your opinion and would like to agree with you, but honestly I do not believe my bp even knows the f/t I feed him are dead. My bp has been fed both live and f/t prey and has never rejected either. I would also like to say that in no way are you "forcing" your snake to eat when feeding f/t, unless you are using hemostats to force-feed which is a whole different issue.

And on the topic of constriction compared to chewing, well my bp strikes and constricts for 10 minutes every feed, so I don't see what activity he may be lacking from eating f/t.

I feed f/t because to keep live mice at my house is not an option because I have severe allergies. Besides that, I do not want to keep them, and to pick one up every week would be silly because I am in the country and would have to drive 45 minutes to get live mice. I am also not bashing anyones opinions and totally agree with those who choose to feed live, but don't jump the gun on those that feed f/t.

I didn't want to seem like I was jumping the gun on people who feed F/T...I completely believe that it is up to the keeper to make the educated decision on which method is best for them and their snake. Please Know.. No knocking intended as I respect yours and all the other members opinions regardless of how they feed. I made the chewing analogy because someone had posted above that they fed their snake F/T and now it doesn't even constrict it's food anymore. Feeding F/T works fine for a lot of people... But personally if my snake stop constricting I would worry and start slowly weening them back to live. That is where that analogy came from. I live walking distance to where I buy my rats so luckily I don't have to worry about keeping them here...

I have seen a lot of cases where the snake will not take F/T the first shot... It happens a lot to people trying to switch a snake over. When it doesn't take... they don't turn around and offer live. They continue to offer F/T until the snake finally takes it... sometimes weeks later. Why?... who really knows... but I would be willing to bet it was hunger and lack of the food they were looking for. It is not force feeding by definition, but if i refused something and was offered that item and that 1 item only until I caved to eat it from hunger or lack of options..I would consider that being forced to eat it. What would happen if a person bought a bulk F/T pack... and the snake refused to eat it for weeks on end?? I would be willing to bet that before we would see a live rat we would see the hemostats come out.

I apologize if that seemed cynical in any way... and know That I am completely aware that there are plenty of happy F/T pounding snakes out there. What I described above is only an issue SOMETIMES...But I mention it because that is my single biggest issue with F/T. If a snake readily takes f/t and can't tell the difference then hey... I see nothing really wrong with it if that what you want to do. But don't starve a snake until he decides to take dead prey... That is simply breaking a creature of it's natural instincts.

[missi182]

I apologize if that seemed cynical in any way... and know That I am completely aware that there are plenty of happy F/T pounding snakes out there. What I described above is only an issue SOMETIMES...But I mention it because that is my single biggest issue with F/T. If a snake readily takes f/t and can't tell the difference then hey... I see nothing really wrong with it if that what you want to do. But don't starve a snake until he decides to take dead prey... That is simply breaking a creature of it's natural instincts.

Well as you said this is only your opinion and further emphasis on the reasoning behind your opinion shows that you respect the chosen methods of other owners and that is admirable. I totally see where you are coming from, even if I do not agree with you 100%, you do make some good points. Good for you to defend your opinion in a proper and respectable manor.