What should i do?

[Josh Emmons]

hi. this is the one out of many live feeding issues for my snakes... today while feeding, a mouse bit the eye of my baby ball, zeus. i saw there was some mysterious wet stuff that appeared to be comming out of his eyes. i called my herp vet to get him in. he said that there is not much that they can do, i am now stopping live feeding and going to pre killed. BUT, they WILL NOT take non moving. i have tried many times, no susses. how can i humanely kill the mouse but keep it twitching?? i do not like killing that much, and i dont have luck from frozen.

[jjmitchell]

That sucks about your baby.... I have a set of kitchen tongs i grab em by the head with them and break their neck..... but i feed rats dont know you may decapitate mic

[Fallguy]

I would reccomend getting some good long feeding tongs. When you grab the prey, get it by the scruff of the neck, while still live. This will work best if the mouse was looking straight at the tongs. Try to offer it butt first, and keep the teeth away from the snake. You can hold it until you know it is dead, or is on no danger of harming the snake.

I am sorry to hear about you snake's eye. Let us know how it does. Get well soon.

[bman123]

alot of videos I see the owner is using tongs and holding the mouse by the back of the neck. Most of the strikes are headshots.
Sorry to hear about what happened. Hopefully when I get my pastel girl in spring she will eat pre killed mice. I think everyone should feed pre killed or F/T just so this doesn't happen.

[BPelizabeth]

I feed live and we stun them prior to feeding. Mice do bite....I got bit the other day and it was a pretty nasty little bite that bled allot.

Ugh....this always starts arguements here but we whack them on the head to stun them prior to feeding. I then take long feeding tongs and hold them for the snakes. I do not let them run loose and the snake hunt them. I did read in one of my care books that like the other poster stated...grab them by the scruff of the neck and offer it like that. With tongs of course. This way if you pre-kill you can still make it move. The book also stated after the snake has it give a tug of the tail to make it more realistic. So far stunning them has worked for me. I have to put a disclaimer in here though. It is not the easiest thing to do. I cannot hand pic my feeders...I cannot look at them beforehand. I just have to get them and take care of business. My supplier of feeders knows what I need I walk in and tell her the size and it is done.


I have heard of ppl putting them in a co2 chamber and pre-killing them. You could do that and then try the tong trick.

By the way...If I were you....get a second opinion on the eye thing. I would think they would want to look at it and that there is some kind of drops that they could put in at least to prevent infection. But that could just be me too. There is a guy on here called Critter Vet....shoot him an email. ??

[exiled reptile]

step 1 grab mouse by tail thwack that mouse off the side of something solid throw mouse in enclosure preferably in tub and twitch that mouse will twitch like there is no tomorrow should get great feeding response simple 1 step process

[het.pied]

step 1 grab mouse by tail thwack that mouse off the side of something solid throw mouse in enclosure preferably in tub and twitch that mouse will twitch like there is no tomorrow should get great feeding response simple 1 step process

ditto!

[het.pied]

oh and im sorry to hear about the eye of your snake. and if it isnt too much to ask would we be able to get some pics?

[j_h_smith]

You wouldn't think this, but Rats don't usually bite. In my experience if you're feeding live, feed rats.

Sorry to hear the news,
Jim Smith

[Elise.m]

You wouldn't think this, but Rats don't usually bite. In my experience if you're feeding live, feed rats.

Sorry to hear the news,
Jim Smith

I always heard about this, and now I have experience to back it up. Micron was bitten by a mouse, I didn't even see it til it was healed up. I've had him on rats for a few feedings. This past feeding the rats mouth was open and was 100% able to chomp down on Micron... But he didn't. Snickets coils terrible and should have been bitten by now, but she hasn't. I like rats much more than mice, feeding wise.