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

[WingedWolfPsion]

I believe I've already addressed the idea of it being cruel to rodents, and the time involved would be several hours. So, how about not being overly worried about the rodents, which have a reasonably quick and humane death, and not being overly worried about the snakes, which rarely take any injury from their prey...with the bonus that time is saved. The snakes also get fresh, healthy food.

I think your argument against live feeding would be like forcing your dog to wear shoes all the time because he might get a scratch on his pad. That would be minimizing his risk of injury as much as possible, lol.

My rats are more cruel to each when the occasional fight breaks out, than the snakes are to them. You can't keep the rats apart because of it, because that would be cruel as well, and predicting such fights isn't possible.

There's no end to the amount of discomfort in the world...but there is a limit to how much you need to be concerned about it.

Feed FT if you prefer, it's often more convenient and cheaper if you do not have local source for live rodents for the same price. If you are a breeder, however, you're going to have to feed live at some point, because many baby balls simply won't start on dead food. Your FT rodents came from a facility where rats occasionally killed each other messily. Just letting you know.

I don't agree with the practice of posting videos of feeding live animals to pets on YouTube, but I wouldn't call the human reaction to watching predation 'sadism'.
It's not sadism. Humans are predators, and when they watch these things happen, they identify with the predator--it excites their instincts, and there is nothing at all strange about that, or wrong with it. It is a natural reaction. It's the reason why chase and kill scenes are included in documentaries about predators--people get a thrill from it.
It's not the suffering of the prey that creates this reaction, it's the empathy for the hunter.