Quote Originally Posted by MiamiRoyalPythons View Post
No need to feed in a separate enclosure. They're smarter than people give them credit for. As long as your hand isnt reeking of rat, they will understand that that is not food. Feeding live p/k or f/t is all in preference. 99% of the time I feed either live or p/k and on the off time when someone doesnt take their p/k it goes in the freezer for next week. I mostly use these for convenience. My rat source is live so it's easier for me to feed live or p/k versus f/t. When feeding live, no you do not hold the rat like with f/t or p/k, you just put the rat in the snakes tub or tank and let them do what nature designed them for. If you do feed live, I wouldnt leave the rat in there for more than a few hours at most. Not just because they can nibble on the snake but because it's stressful for the snake to have something in it's environment that it doesnt want. Also, I just want to make a comment about that picture of the half eaten snake. It's been around for quite some time and always seems to come up in the live v.s. frozen debates. What I want to know is really, how big was the rat that was put with that snake and how long it was left alone. I honestly dont think that much damage could have been done in even 24 hours. Something else I always wonder is if that snake was sick. I mean, it was obviously alive when the rat started chewing, so what snake would not defensively strike? Not saying live is the best or only way to go, just saying, I think that that photo has more at play than it states.
I agree for something that extreme to happen there must have been something else going on. I posted it in this thread because I feel that it shows the worst case of what can happen if proper care isn't taken when feeding live. I use to feed live and know that as long as you keep an eye on things you should be fine. But I feel that if your snake will take F/T or P/K it's safer and at least with F/T it is usually cheaper. To me it is just the logical thing to do: feed F/T or P/K if your snake will take them, and feed live if necessary. It isn't a big deal either way, and both methods require care.