Live Prey vs. F/T as a component of a Snake's "Mental Health"

[Stewart_Reptiles]

I have no problem with feeding live this is just my 2cents, but I've read this many times and to me it's 100% the owners fault for feeding an improperly thawed rat. If someone can't take a frozen rat out of a bag and let it thaw out until it's not frozen it's there fault. If you feed a snake a live rodent and the rodent decides to fight for it's own life by chewing on your snake whose fault is that? I understand that you can be on stand by if the snake does get a bad hold on the rat but sometimes the damage might already be done since things can happen so quickly. Even with an appropriately sized, well fed, happy, oblivious rats some will fight to stay alive and you never really know when that's going to happen. You just have to be on guard and watch the situation very closely. You can never be too careful.


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Sadly in the vast majority of cases where there is an incident (in other words all those terrible pictures you see floating around which are used by pro f/t feeders) the owner is at fault as well, mistakes such as feeding a prey too large, stressing the feeder, leaving the prey too long in the enclosure, feeding a malnourished or dehydrated prey etc, stunning the prey etc.

A proper size healthy prey will go in a corner and fall asleep, they do not attack or go and chew on snakes.

I have been feeding slightly over 200 live preys each month since 2007 when I started breeding feeders (you do the maths) and I have ZERO incident to report and have NEVER intervened either, it's not luck many others have done so as well .....

Now back to the regular programming.