The Pros and Cons between Live and Froze!????????????

[Anatopism]

Pros of feeding live - as mentioned before, availability. If raising your own, you can decide what to feed it, in theory making it more nutritious, but I don't honestly think it makes much of a difference.
Cons of feeding live - mice and rats have sharp teeth. rabbits have strong legs with sharp claws and big teeth.

Pros of pre-killed - smells more like live prey, as it is recently dead, more likely to be eaten than f/t by a picky snake than f/t.
Cons of pre-killed - can be messy, and not everybody is capable or willing to humanely kill an animal used for food.

Pros of f/t - convenience, dead food doesn't bite or kick, 'moral' issues for some people
cons of f/t - can be difficult to encourage a picky snake to start on f/t, sometimes they smell gross.


If possible, I feed f/t to all snakes that will take them, because while it is uncommon for a rat or mouse to cause (serious) injury to a snake if fed carefully while being watched, if I'm going to spend lots of money and invest my time and affection towards a snake, I'm not going to take the risk of letting it get hurt.

I have actually seen a young red tail get seriously injured by a barely weaned mouse (you know, the ones that seem like they can barely break human skin if they bite?). The mouse was not starved, and had not been kept in an improper habitat. The snake grabbed the mouse by it's back end, leaving it's front half more or less free, and coiled it in such a way that the mouse bit the skin near the snake's spine in the lower 3rd of it's body. The snake's skin essentially 'unzipped' as it attempted to coil tighter instead of releasing and re-striking for a better grip. There was about half an inch of the snake's spine exposed, and this all happened in seconds. (With a make-shift bandage until he could get to the vet, he was stitched up and survived with a barely noticeable scar).

I've also seen plenty of snakes with nasty scars around their eyes, or even missing eyes because all it takes is one lucky bite from the rat if it is not grabbed in the right place.

Uncommon to cause serious injury? Highly, but if a snake will take f/t from me, I'd prefer to limit my risks. I'm lucky so far in that my snakes I have currently that haven't fully taken to eating f/t also only grab their mice by the neck or face, or release and try again if it tries to bite them.