This is why you should NEVER feed live

[JLC]

I suppose I should have swapped the NEVER for a GOOD reason to not feed live. I think in my origional post I said there are soem reasons where you have to do live (I know how heated this debate can be and I questioned if I should even post this). Although I havent considered the mass breeder situation, I still know of breeders with tonnes of snakes that still do frozen. And yes while in a human hand the bite is superficial think about how much smaller parts of the snake are. If the same bite was done to the snakes head it could very well go deep enough to do serious damage.

It could have...if the bite had happened on the eye or something. Keep in mind that human skin is very fragile compared to that of most animals, including scaled snakes. Their scales protect them from a LOT...way more than our own skin does. Does this mean a rat can't bite through? Of course not...but does it mean every time a rat's mouth gets on the snake's body that a huge chunk is going to be ripped out or internal organs damaged? Ummm, no. Especially when we're talking about an appropriately sized prey item. Obviously a grown rat will be much more dangerous to a baby snake than it would be to a 4000g breeder.

There's nothing wrong with making the post....just be really, really careful when choosing such absolute words as "NEVER" or "ALWAYS". It's a good experience to share and I'm sure someone can learn from it and possibly use it to make their own choices about feeding live or f/t.

Of course there is SOME risk involved in feeding live....just as there is SOME risk in feeding f/t. Life IS risk...just by being alive, we risk injury and death. This isn't to say as keepers that we shouldn't take steps to mitigate those risks as best we can...but we can't claim ANY sort of absolute that will negate ALL risks in life. Risk factors and benefits have to be weighed carefully in every decision we make as keepers. The benefits of carefully feeding live, for many, clearly outweigh the slight risk of a rodent bite. The benefit of the convenience of leaving a live rat overnight with your picky snake does NOT outweigh the much higher risk of the rat making a snack out of an indifferent snake. ....That's my take on the whole debate.