Quote Originally Posted by BAMReptiles View Post
even watching them, they can still get bit, you dont control how the snake grabs the rat. point was better safe than sorry. if you're that worried about having an extra dead rat, you could always bonk em on the head to stun them instead of kill them.
And then when the snake doesn't eat the rat, you have a rat waking up who is in a lot of pain. I don't know about you, but when I get hit on the head, it hurts like heck and it doesn't make me a very happy person. And you possibly have a brain damaged animal, depending on how hard they were hit. Leaving them to live like that, in my opinion, is animal cruelty.

My animals get either f/t, pre-killed, or live. No stunning rodents in this house. I am very careful when I feed live. I am always there to intervene should something go wrong. So far, nothing has gone wrong. I always have tongs in hand because if a rat or house does happen to get wrapped up in a bad position, I can easily stick the end of the tongs in the rodent's mouth and let him chew on that until he dies, instead of him chewing on my snake. I have been keeping snakes for 4 years now and not a single one of my snakes has been bitten by a rodent while in my care.