snake got bit

[rabernet]

Yes. It can cause a whole host of problems. Infections can occur which would be the most common thing. First of all you shouldn't be feeding your ball or any of your snakes live prey. You should be feeding f/t. There is absolutely no advantage to feeding live, only disadvantages. You should probably take your ball to the vet as soon as possible.

Really? I've been feeding live exclusively to my entire collection since I've been keeping ball pythons. I've only chosen to feed my albino f/t, because small nicks and scratches show up so much on them, and I (as well as others) believe that the lack of melanin seems to make their skin/scales feel a bit thinner and more susceptible to scratches that you wouldn't see on non-albino's.

I've stated this many times before, I've easily fed off over 13K live prey to my collection, and in that time, I can count on ONE hand the number of times I've had true bites to any of my collection. And even then, a bite left an incidental scratch. But for the sake of argument, let's double that incidence rate to 10 in over 13K feedings.

That makes my risk of a bite with my personal small set of data, a .076923% chance of a bite that causes a wound.

I do choose to feed my colubrids f/t, because it's just easier for me to get f/t in appropriate sized prey than it is to get it weekly in live (the baby colubrids are still on mice pinkies and fuzzies and I don't breed mice).

But the pythons are all doing quite nicely on live prey weekly. All are scar free as well.

Bottom line, each keeper needs to make a personal decision to feed what works best for THEM and their animals, but it's un-necessary, and irresponsible to demonize those that feed live and do so responsibly. And for what it's worth - I do not stun my prey items either. I simply make sure that they are well fed and well hydrated, and I remove them if they have not been consumed within a 1/2 an hour (usually sitting in a corner of the enclosure blissfully grooming themselves). .