Quote Originally Posted by BAMReptiles View Post
even breeding your own, you're still better off feeding pk as opposed to live. i have hundreds if not thousands of rodents born every month and not 1 of my over 50 snakes HAS to eat live, they will ALL take pre-killed. if they take pk or ft there's no reason to feed them live, especially to switch them over to it. you're just asking for your snake to get hurt.
There are reasons why I feed live. My rats are as precious to me as the snakes... they don't die unless they have to. So, when the ball pythons skip meals like they often do, the rats get to live another week.

And about "asking for my snake to get hurt"... today, my son came home with this big gash running down his shin about 1.5 inches wide and 4 inches long. He fell off the playground. He doesn't HAVE to play in the playground... there are a lot of things he can do to expend all that extra energy. So, letting him run around the playground is just asking for him to get hurt. Okay, so what's my point? Well, mainly that boys play in the playground and snakes eat live rats. That's pretty much the way things work around my house. We mitigate accidents by being careful. So far, the boys are still healthy and so are the snakes.