Do You...

[NightWolf]

Do you prefer live or frozen? Why?
What bedding do you prefer to use?

[kiiarah]

I go with frozen/thawed for various reason. The most important is that it is safer for the snake. It can be reasonably safe to feed live while closely supervising, but the only way to completely rule out a bite is by feeding pre-killed or frozen. I prefer not to chance it. I would never forgive myself if I took an unnecessary risk and it wound up getting my little guy hurt. I have seen some really nasty bite photos.

There is also the matter of convenience. I like being able to stock up and not have to worry about it until each feeding night. There is a certain level of convenience to feeding live I suppose, as for the rat being ready to feed at all times. However, I would much rather not have to care for my animals' food as well. Keepers who feed live often wind up with a snake who is fasting and a new "pet" rat.

All that being said, if I were having difficulties getting him to accept frozen and a more experienced keeper were to tell me to try live I would of course do it. In the meantime though, it is just safer and more convenient to avoid it.

As for bedding, I live in a very dry state so I have been using the Eco-Earth, since it is good at retaining humidity. I did use aspen shavings previously and, while the aesthetic value was alright, the performance wasn't what I was looking for. The Eco-Earth can be a bit more of a hassle since it is messy and has to be dampened prior to use. I find it to be worth it though, since humidity is so critical to a snake's health. I prefer not to gamble with anything that works less than great.

[tbowman]

We can avoid creating another 20 page thread by using the search function. The advantages and disadvantage have been outlined in countless threads.

Some people feed live, some people feed frozen thawed. Both can work well with minimal risk.

I like to keep everything as clean as possible so I use craft or newspaper. The biggest downside is that you can't spot clean. Any time the snake goes to the bathroom you have to clean the entire enclosure.

There are also numerous loose substrates like shredded aspen and things of that nature. Easy to spot clean daily and replace all of the substrate maybe once a month. I guess it could be useful to keep humidity higher but I don't notice any problems with the paper.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

I feed live to my BP - Convenient and fast for a large collection, a few (1 to 3) animals eat F/T so any surplus of rats that are euthanized can be used as well.

I mainly feed Frozen to my Colubrids as I always have a huge surplus of mice.

Bedding depends on a few things, animal and time of the year.

I used aspen for all my animals except females that are being paired (those are on newspaper) or about to lay (those are on mulch)

Bottom line DO and FEED what works for you not for others, just educate yourself and experiment.

[DVirginiana]

I prefer frozen and feed it to all my colubrids, but I feed live to my BP because it's what she takes.

As for bedding I personally dislike aspen (it works perfectly fine, I just personally don't like it) and use cypress mulch for my BP and newspaper for my colubrids. I also dislike cocofiber for anything but my frogs because it gets messy, but again plenty of people use it and it works fine. Like Deborah said, there are a lot of acceptable ways to feed and house your snakes, just figure out what works for you.

[Jamiesniper]

I feed frozen as I live in Ireland and it's hard to get live feeders unless you breed them yourself and I usually buy 30-40 rodents at once, if I had the space and means to breed my own rodents and feed live I would, live fed snakes I find have a better body tone, don't poop as often and don't fast as often either.

As for substrate, I use one that is kind of like kitty litter but it's compressed paper pellets


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