Live prey vs......

[doobysnack]

i went to feeding my rtb prekilled fuzzie rats do to i fill rats have more nutrion and i dont want my snake hurt one of my old bps got bite by a live mouse once so then i started knocking them out.i never could get my bp to eat frozen thawed.

[Jeanne]

Half of mine eat f/t or p/k.. the other half eat live- out of neccessity. I tried to get all mine switched over to p/k or f/t, but 2 of my bp's refuse anything thats NOT live. And to be honest, if I had a HUGE collection, I just dont know that feeding f/t would be a good choice b/c of the space it would take to thaw a bunch of rodents.

[Smulkin]

Valid point - I'd think trying to supervise all those feeds would be equally tricky.

I have a few BP's that have gotten to the point that they no longer bother with constriction - once the dead rat is laid on the doorstep of their hide they'll just start gulping. Neph (afrock) won't even take anything live anymore - or constrict it for that matter - and considering her potential size that just a-ok with me lol.

[Adam_Wysocki]

Valid point - I'd think trying to supervise all those feeds would be equally tricky.

Well, I am a professional.

Seriously though ... for beginners and people with a few snakes that want to feed live I absolutely advocate responsible feeding and direct supervision until the rat is all the way gone.

Once your collection gets fairly large, you certainly gain the experience to know who needs to be watched closely and who will do fine just having a rodent dropped into their enclosure. I certainly wouldn't be an advocate of feeding your average pet ball python the same way I feed my collection.

-adam

[elevatethis]

There's a dynamic of the whole "live vs dead" arguement that I think gets left out sometimes...I'd like to preserve my snake's natural instincts to ID and strike and constrict etc etc as opposed to just tossing a dead item that they just begin to swallow w/o effort. I mean, we gotta realize that these guys are wild animals after all. There's a reason that zoo's often hide the food they give to scavenger type animals or attach meat to moving ziplines in cheetah cages and thiings like that. Let the ball python be a ball python! What do y'all think?

[Adam_Wysocki]

There's a dynamic of the whole "live vs dead" arguement that I think gets left out sometimes...I'd like to preserve my snake's natural instincts to ID and strike and constrict etc etc as opposed to just tossing a dead item that they just begin to swallow w/o effort. I mean, we gotta realize that these guys are wild animals after all. There's a reason that zoo's often hide the food they give to scavenger type animals or attach meat to moving ziplines in cheetah cages and thiings like that. Let the ball python be a ball python! What do y'all think?

Not me ... once you take a ball python and stick it in a cage it's not really the same wild animal anymore ... zoos do those things to exercise mammals that normally in the wild would have hundreds of acres of territory to roam on, but have you ever seen a zoo feed their crocs? They just toss the food in. I feed live because it's the cheapest and most convenient method I have available for feeding my collection and it works for my snakes ... if the same were true about F/T, then that's what I'd do.

-adam

[elevatethis]

Not me ... once you take a ball python and stick it in a cage it's not really the same wild animal anymore ... zoos do those things to exercise mammals that normally in the wild would have hundreds of acres of territory to roam on, but have you ever seen a zoo feed their crocs? They just toss the food in. I feed live because it's the cheapest and most convenient method I have available for feeding my collection and it works for my snakes ... if the same were true about F/T, then that's what I'd do.

-adam

Yeah I see what you are saying. I guess I'm just playing with the idea that live food might be a little more stimulating for them, and possibly contribute to their overall health in a positive way.

(goes to google and starts researching for any relevent info on this...)