I feed all my snakes an appropriately sized f/t food item every five days. To continue the f/t versus live conversation (though I'm not sure if any of the following will be new), there are a couple reasons why I convert all my animals to f/t. The obvious main reason is for the safety of my snakes. I feed live when necessary, especially during the conversion period, but I've had a minor bite or two with some of my more inexperienced and younger snakes who don't strike and constrict properly. My heart can't take helplessly watching a mouse sink an incisor into the side of one of my animals, haha. Another reason is that, because of the previously mentioned incidences, when I do feed live, I stun my prey. Not only do I not like doing this, for obvious reasons of it seeming inhumane, but I also absolutely hate stunning/killing an animal only to have a snake refuse the meal for that week, and not have another snake to take it. I know having a frozen and thawed rat passed on equates just as much to an animal giving its life for waste, but somehow it seems so much more wasteful and disheartening to throw away a freshly killed mouse that was otherwise happy doing its rodent thing moments ago. I'm not at all squeamish about the predator-prey relationship, and I have absolutely no issues feeding live prey for ethical reasons (i.e. I don't find the act at all cruel for either party), but again, the potential waste factor of dispatching an animal and not having it eaten gets to me sometimes. Anywho, just my little input here. I'm very happy to see everyone putting so much thought into the well being of their animals though, it's very encouraging!

Cheers,
-Matt