This never happened.Originally Posted by Zincubus
I am forty years old, I have been a keeper since I was six. I have kept hot snakes, constrictors and colubrids. I have fed many hundreds of mice alive and many thousands more f/t. I can say with certainty that no constricting snake ever took 25 minutes to do in a rat pup once a coil was thrown. 25 seconds maybe. Truth be told, there is sometimes a squeek, sometimes a drop of blood on the nose. Cardiac arrest occurs quickly and the mouse dies.
I prefer f/t since it is safer and way more convenient, but if a snake won't change over, then there is nothing wrong with live food. Fortunately, most of us have captive bread snakes, so the snakes will eat f/t. Wild born snakes can be really fussy. As human beings, we cannot tell a reptile evolved over millions of years what it will eat. We can and certainly should try to reduce suffering of the prey and protect our pets to whatever degree is possible, but we also cannot let a snake starve to death because we disagree with its preferences.
David
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