Live vs. Frozen Food.

[BHReptiles]

On craigslist you can buy a mini fridge for 50 bucks tops. If you turn it all the way cool it usually freezes throughout.

$7.00 - $1.50 = $5.50 more per feeding per animal

Your sig says you have 4 ball pythons. 5.50 x 4 is 22 bucks per feeding. You could probably find a fridge for that much and your snakes would be safe from getting mauled. Every subsequent feeding you can think of it as saving/earning over 20 dollars. I'm confused why you haven't done that math yourself yet, combined the numbers with the knowledge of the dangers of feeding live, and made the obvious choice.

Are you THAT limited on space?

Right now, I'm currently spending about $20 a week on feeders. It's not that I can't afford this, because I can (otherwise I would not own 10 snakes), but it's because I do not have room in my small freezer that I have in my bedroom for frozen feeders.

My living arrangements are pretty much non-negociable. I live with people who dislike my snakes greatly. If I was to be allowed to keep my snakes, all of my snakes and their supplies, feeders, etc. had to be kept inside my bedroom and out of any "public" area. Because I'm also a college student, my room is filled with things I need for school as well as your traditional bedroom furniture. My room is not that big and there is no additional wall space to have another freezer. Already, all my free space is taken up by racks, one minifridge/freezer and an incubator.

I have done the math and ideally, I would much rather breed my own food and gas them before feeding than purchase my rodents online or from a feed store. This way I can monitor my rodent's diet and I know exactly what my snakes are eating. I also don't have to worry about them being live when I feed them (however...I do have one corn snake and one ball python that won't eat frozen or pre-killed). I also don't condone bashing the rats over the head, so I won't ask the feed store to kill them for me (I personally find it cruel). However, even though I might want to do this, it does not meal it's a practical option for me at the moment.

I will not have my own house for at least another 18 months so I have to make do with what I have. And what I have is no more space for freezers or rodent racks.

Now, this thread has deviated from it's original intent so there's really no need to continue. I simply noticed that my ball pythons grow more when eating live food. I keep very detailed records of my BPs weights and the weights of their prey items and I have run my own mini experiment. It's just a correlation I noticed and I only wanted to know if other people observed the same.