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

[Foschi Exotic Serpents]

Gavin.. Your arguments are getting ridiculous... Homegrownscales is absolutely right. There is at least one member here who has a ball that very recently got tapeworms from FT.

Many parasites can NOT be killed by freezing. Eggs can go dormant and can hatch when conditions are right again.

In the last few years, we on here have seen countless photos and heard countless complaints of FT suppliers. Rodents coming in covered in feces, fleas, other parasites.. Smelling badly when thawed because they were allowed to sit dead for too long before freezing. They had begun to rot at the facility. Etc etc..

You have no clue how those rodents have been killed. Were they really gassed??? Because it's cheaper to just throw them all in a huge container in the freezer.. Do you think all these companies, who are in it to make $$, are going to tell you the truth about that?

You also keep forgetting that we are talking about BPs here...

You mentioned pet stores having all theirs on FT. Bull!! I promise you that petsmart and petco have maybe 1 out every 10-15 snakes that actually eats for them. Especially the balls. They usually never eat for them because those babies have either not yet been switched to FT, or they simply have not had their first meal yet and they don't want to take a dead rodent as their first meal.

This is something we have talked about on here many times. We have members on here who work for these stores. They see these things and it bothers them.

As for you saying 100's are injured by live feedings. That is also untrue. Where are these statistics? Many more are injured by being burned. Like was stated earlier, injuries happen if a rodent is left in a tank/tub/cage unattended, and usually for a long period of time. Bites during actual feeding are rare, and when they do happen, are minor. In the years I've been feeding live, I've never had a bite with one exception.. Back in 1996 a large rat bit a Burmese I had just bad enough to need some silver cream applied to it. Granted, that was when I decided to start feeding prekilled once the rats are weaned for most snakes, but I still have a couple picky eaters who require live.

The truth is, almost all of us who breed our own rodents have rats as pets as well. We care for them as much as we do our reptiles, but we understand what we have to do for our reptiles. We do not agree with anyone who feeds live out of pleasure for causing harm or death to another animal. We here are not like that.

If you begin breeding BPs and keeping them in large numbers, having to start new hatchlings, assist feeds on late starters, deal with the changing feeding habits of breeding adults, etc etc... And you insist on adhering to a F/T only rule, it won't be long before you get frustrated with BPs, get rid of them all, and get into boa's, carpet's, burm's, or something else that will agree with you 100% of the time..