Is live feeding really that dangerous?

[tacticalveterinarian]

Feeding live (and F/T) for over 25 years. There are advantages and disadvantages to both- do research, ask others for their experiences and make an educated choice. Although I have seen severe bites and injuries to snakes from live prey, the percentage of injury is very very low if the keeper IS RESPONSIBLE AND USES COMMON SENSE. The best analogy I can give is this: the risk of injury from eating an apple is very low and humans eat apples every day, yet there is a small percentage that chokes on the apple seeds and die. Does that mean we all stop eating apples?

[M.P.C]

It shouldn't take half an hr to live feed, bring them home give them a bowl of water and some food and continue with your day til its feeding time, no need to scent the room snakes have an absolutly amazing sense of smell, the moment the prey enters the cage your snake knows its there, surpervise till it stops squirming and move on... its not like killing a rodent isnt ingrained in the snakes brain or anything like that rite?... if you wanna feed f/t hurray for you, but its getting really annoying with people all about f/t constantly bad mouthing live feeding practices just because they preffer a different method

[John1982]

The thing about thawing taking longer though is... I can walk away from thawing rats. They aren't going anywhere, I stick them in a cup of cold water and go do something else that needs doing for 20-30 minutes, then come back and spend another 5 heating them until they temp correctly (I always temp with a gun to make sure they're defrosted and heated through). Then I just toss the heated dead feeder in and the girls tag 'em as soon as they get a bead on 'em.

So honestly it's about 25 minute prep and then less than a minute per snake (my girls take them just that fast, but you can usually tell through experience if the snake is going to take that day or not, so it doesn't take 15-20 minutes) another 5 ish for clean up (washing the feeding tray, tongs, putting stuff away, etc.) and I'm done.

VS properly fed live as deb described in which you have to fed and water the feeder first, take it into the room to scent it and get the snakes hyped for 30 minutes, watch each snake kill the rat (which granted, doesn't take that long once the snake does strike and coil; I had to watch Strudel when she was still on live and they are efficient at what they do, but it still took longer than tossing in the dead and heated feeder) remove the rat after 15 to 20 minutes if the snake hasn't eaten it, and then you've got a live feeder at the end of the day that you need to continue to house and feed and water (if someone else doesn't take it)...

Yeah, I'm not entirely convinced that live feeding is all that quicker.

You can put f/t in the fridge the day before and not have to wait on thawing at all really - just heating up to the proper temperatures. If you don't breed your own rodents and need to feed/water them before offering it seems to me you can do that while simultaneously scenting the room if that's your way. I'm seeing about 10-15 minutes extra time for live feeding as the only difference really starts when you offer that last rodent and that's if all of your snakes pounce of f/t as quickly as yours. The more zombie dances you have to do the shorter the time gap becomes.

I get these ideas in my head that are perfectly clear yet fail horribly trying to convey them to others. I was attempting to make 2 points in my post.

1) The time requirements for live and f/t are close enough to make that particular argument moot.

2) If somehow they weren't, is spending more time interacting with your reptiles a negative? If it is, I'm not sure what to tell you..

As to the dangers of feeding live, they obviously exist. There are also dangers to feeding f/t improperly. Growing up, we fed exclusively live to mine and my father's collections. We never intervened, even when a rat managed to sink teeth into a snake. My father used to say if the rat kills the snake we'd keep the rat as an honored pet. I never did get that pet rat as we never had an animal more than superficially injured in thousands of feedings. Our snakes weren't chewed up and scarred to pieces either as injuries were rare and typically unnoticable within a couple shed cycles.

Most of my current collection is on f/t because I just don't want to deal with producing that many live rodents. I have 1 rack of rodents I raise for my ball pythons because they honestly are one of the most inconsistent feeders I've ever encountered when dealing purely with f/t prey. The main attractant to raising my own feeders for the royals is that they take food much more consistently and if they do refuse I simply return the rat to it's tub to feed another day.

[drmoreau]

I've been wondering about this. I'm considering taking in a rescue python. Guy I'm adopting her from feeds live to all of his snakes. However, she's barely two years old, still small for her size, and she has an injury on her neck from the last person who had the snake before the guy did. I don't want to live feed her until she's a little bigger though, since I'm not experienced with snakes and she's not really an experienced hunter. Is there a way I can kind of encourage her to eat thawed/warmed up mice? Or how can I make sure she can eat live safely? The guy suggested I use a shoe box and put her and the mouse in the box until she eats it but I'm hugely concerned about the mouse getting defensive.

[DVirginiana]

I've been wondering about this. I'm considering taking in a rescue python. Guy I'm adopting her from feeds live to all of his snakes. However, she's barely two years old, still small for her size, and she has an injury on her neck from the last person who had the snake before the guy did. I don't want to live feed her until she's a little bigger though, since I'm not experienced with snakes and she's not really an experienced hunter. Is there a way I can kind of encourage her to eat thawed/warmed up mice? Or how can I make sure she can eat live safely? The guy suggested I use a shoe box and put her and the mouse in the box until she eats it but I'm hugely concerned about the mouse getting defensive.

As long as you don't mind wasting a couple f/t feeders, there's no reason you can't try offering f/t feeders for a few weeks just to see if she'll take it if that'd be more convenient for you. Things like blasting them with a blowdryer before feeding to bump the temp, some snakes prefer that you leave the feeder in their tank overnight for them to eat in peace, some strike better when you jiggle it around and make it look 'alive', just try several different things.

If she refuses f/t and you need to do live, it sounds like she's pretty small? Unless you're in an area with a lot more variety in live feeders than where I live, that means you're probably going to be feeding mice. Whereas you do still need to supervise the feed (I watch until the prey is dead then leave my snake to eat) mice are not as strong or dangerous as rats. I've seen mice try their hardest to bite my snake and be unable to even scuff the scales. I also recommend keeping a pair of tongs nearby to put in the prey's mouth if it's in a position to bite the snake once it's been coiled. As long as you supervise and are ready to intervene, the risk of a feeding injury goes down to almost nothing.

[kgrah1]

I feed frozen because my girl cannot aim to save her life. She's got plenty of "run and hide" instinct, next to nothing of "kill kill kill." This is not an aggressive snake, and I would not trust her to defend herself if faced with something that's actually harmful, such as a live, agitated rat. If you feed live and that works for you, power to you. She eats frozen and I don't plan to switch.

If she doesn't take the meal, I wait until the next feed. So far anytime I leave one in with her overnight, she sleeps on the opposite side of the tank and won't come out until I remove the mouse.

[Lizardlicks]

You can put f/t in the fridge the day before and not have to wait on thawing at all really - just heating up to the proper temperatures. If you don't breed your own rodents and need to feed/water them before offering it seems to me you can do that while simultaneously scenting the room if that's your way. I'm seeing about 10-15 minutes extra time for live feeding as the only difference really starts when you offer that last rodent and that's if all of your snakes pounce of f/t as quickly as yours. The more zombie dances you have to do the shorter the time gap becomes.

I get these ideas in my head that are perfectly clear yet fail horribly trying to convey them to others. I was attempting to make 2 points in my post.

1) The time requirements for live and f/t are close enough to make that particular argument moot.

2) If somehow they weren't, is spending more time interacting with your reptiles a negative? If it is, I'm not sure what to tell you..

As to the dangers of feeding live, they obviously exist. There are also dangers to feeding f/t improperly. Growing up, we fed exclusively live to mine and my father's collections. We never intervened, even when a rat managed to sink teeth into a snake. My father used to say if the rat kills the snake we'd keep the rat as an honored pet. I never did get that pet rat as we never had an animal more than superficially injured in thousands of feedings. Our snakes weren't chewed up and scarred to pieces either as injuries were rare and typically unnoticable within a couple shed cycles.

Most of my current collection is on f/t because I just don't want to deal with producing that many live rodents. I have 1 rack of rodents I raise for my ball pythons because they honestly are one of the most inconsistent feeders I've ever encountered when dealing purely with f/t prey. The main attractant to raising my own feeders for the royals is that they take food much more consistently and if they do refuse I simply return the rat to it's tub to feed another day.

Heh, well, I can't really defrost feeders in my fridge currently because we only have the one fridge and it's got the people food in it. Hubby loves the snakes and is fascinated with my hobby, but he's a chef and I think he'd draw the line there lol.

As far as more time interacting with my snakes, absolutely I want more! Just not on feeding day when they're hungry and primed for dinner haha. I keep interaction on that day to a minimum, only feeding and any other immediate stuff that needs to be addressed like changing out soiled substrate. My girls are curious, rather out going for bps, and have a great feeding response, so I take a couple extra precautions to minimize accidental bites. Interaction is great for me, but the snakes could care less, and really probably do better without it. I do agree, the time thing in general is negligible between the two feeding methods. That's actually what I was trying to get at in my post, I didn't feel one was any faster over the other during the actual feeding all things considered.

When I get into breeding the snakes, I'll probably also have a couple feeder colonies for starting off hatchlings, but over all it's def been less hassle to fed f/t for me than it was to feed live.

[rlditmars]

Heh, well, I can't really defrost feeders in my fridge currently because we only have the one fridge and it's got the people food in it. Hubby loves the snakes and is fascinated with my hobby, but he's a chef and I think he'd draw the line there lol.

You could pick up one of those mini fridges the college kids use that are like 24" X 24". it wouldn't take up much space and it could be used exclusively for your stuff so the Hubby won't be offended.

[Zincubus]

You only have to keep an eye out until the rodent is safely dead - much less time than it takes to thaw. I'm not sure how this makes effective rhetoric for your anti live campaign? More time in the snake room sounds like something for the "pros" list to someone who enjoys spending time interacting with and observing their reptiles. Let's say you give a snake 10-15 minutes to dispatch a prey item before abandoning a feed. Seems to me, feeding live only takes 10-15 minutes longer than feeding f/t and you don't have to thaw anything out. Maybe it takes a bit less than that as you also don't have to employ any of the "tricks" used to get some animals to accept.

I wasn't actively campaigning anything ... To be fair my question was aimed at Debs as she's feeding 250 + live each time and as you're supposed to be watching closely I couldn't see how this was possible - basic math.

[Zincubus]

As regards the myth that somehow feeding d/f frozen is wasteful - surely that only applies to the few who have just one snake . Most have multiple snakes plus lizards and whatever so there's normally another willing recipient