Live food...why? Honestly & with facts!

[Homegrownscales]

Ok I'll just state this for myself and I'm pretty sure any other person that feeds live. We know the risks associated with feeding live. Not a single person throws rats in and leaves for hours upon hours or walks away and that's the end of it. Feeding large amounts of animals is a process. Anyone whom is feeding that many knows what they are doing. You don't get that many snakes with out knowing what you are doing. The grotesque pictures of bps being eaten alive by rodents that you see, is from a hungry dehydrated rat that in turn becomes the predator in a cage. That is from a day or more being left in a Cage or tub. No water no food. That doesn't happen in 20 min to an hour. Many people that feed large amounts of balls also prefer to feed smaller more frequent meals. I feed weanlings or just a tad bit larger than a weanling. This is a hell of alot different than feeding jumbo rats. Weanlings have no idea what going on yet. They are still clueless to the world. Yes when they are constricted they will try to bite that Is instinct. Being a smaller meal for a bp they don't last long. Prey doesn't last long in my bins on feeding day anyways. Many of us that do feed live in large amounts have sort of like a sensor in our brains. Yes we put the rat in, close the bin, move to the next. But as I'm on the next bin if I hear a squeal my "sensor" goes off and I open it real quick to make sure everything is good. If I need them, my hemostats are in my back pocket, I secure the rat, and i move back on. If I don't hear the squeal I know to check back on that bin, when I'm done putting rats in. I also do my feedings in groups. It's a 10 min process per group. Anyone whom hasn't eaten by then, doesn't. This by all means again, is a PROCESS. And perhaps if you knew what it was like to feed 10/30/40/100 balls you would understand. You asked for the reasons folks feed live. You got them. You didn't ask for our feeding practices.
This doesn't make people that feed live lazy at all. Having that many animals you have to Weigh your options. Am I going to spend 4 hours or more, feeding, heating up rats over and over with the hair dryer, doing the zombie dance? Or am I going to spend an hour feeding bc i have to spend the other three hours cleaning bins. Or spraying bins, filling water bowls. Etc.
What choice would you make if you had 60 hungry snakes, worked a full time job, had to keep everyone clean, etc? Would you still go for the zombie dance? Even if it cut in to bin cleaning time, or job time, kids time etc... Or does it seem like a different situation then?
I guess what I'm saying with all of this is everyone has their reasons for feeding how and what they do. A bit
More comes into play than just being lazy or not lazy when you have a large collection. But I know for a fact that 99.9% of folks on this site that do feed live know what precautions to take. As I said before BOTH live and ft have their risks. Not either one is safer than the other if the person is uneducated about the risks associated with each.


Check out what's new on my website... www.Homegrownscales.com