You are underestimating the damaging power rat and rabbit teeth can do.
Yes boas are great at doing their job but accidents do happen. It only takes one accident and either the rat or rabbit sinking some incisors into the snakes eye or neck/spine and you have a huge vet bill or possible a dead snake.
And here we go with the lack of knowledge on your part. A nice relaxed rat is less likely to be on the defense and this wont react as quick when grabbed by the snake. A dazed rat that come out of it, is going to be one pissed off rat that is on the defensive and ready to bit anything. That is the reason people say if you do feed live, dont dangle a live rat by the tail to the snake as that puts the rat on defense and stresses it. You calmly put the rat in the cage and let it explore so it is calm and not suspecting when the snake grabs it. It hopefully wont have time to react unless of course the snake makes a bad grab.
And you should go check out some of the videos on wild snakes like anacondas and stuff that biologists study in the wild. A lot of them have some serious battle scars on their body and head. I saw one anaconda that had a serious mouth infection and the biologists didnt know if it would actually survive but their job wasnt to treat animals in the wild so they just let it be. Generally an animal in the wild is going to have a better immune system than out lazy captive bred ones who never experience any kind of onslaught by bacteria, viruses etc on a daily basis like its wild cousins do.
You believe what you want man. You seem to think that boas or your boa is a superman that is indestructible but I'm telling you a rabbit or rat CAN seriously injure a snake and/or kill it but most likely not directly. It would come from secondary infection as rabbits and rats and even humans have pretty filthy bacteria ridden mouths. Now like i said, it's not really common but there is that chance. Why take that risk and roll the dice at every feeding whether your snake gets injured and you end up with a huge vet bill. Breeders i can see a reason behind it as some have hundreds of snakes to deal with and trying to thaw out 100 mice and then feed them off would be a job in itself but for a hobbyist that only has 9 snakes, i find it easy to just throw everything in a bucket of warm water and come back in an hour for the small stuff and 2-3 hours for the big stuff and feed knowing dang well i wont possibly have the rush my snake down to my vet on an emergency call. My vet cuts me deals on stuff as i take all my stuff to her but still, it's not $20 for a visit. It still runs me anywhere from $150-$300 depending what I'm having done lol.








