Again wow, let me quote Mike:

I AM ONLY LOOKING FOR FIRST HAND EXPERIENCES HERE. I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT WHAT YOU HAVE READ, OR HEARD, OR WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FRIENDS SNAKE. I WANT TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCES, FEEDING YOUR SNAKES, FIRST HAND.

You should never feed your animals based on horror stories from others. A lot of people that responded do not feed live prey because of things the heard. It all goes back to responsibility. You feed your animal prey that it is to big, you get what you get. You leave prey in the cage that is to big for the animal, you get what you get. I would venture to guess that both of those are the main causes for such things happening. What a lot of people do not realize is that when you freeze a food it, because all of its vital organs shut down, the snake looses out on a lot of the B12 and other vitamins that the rat/mouse provides for the snake, but thats a whole other discussion. I think the main thing in here is that there are waaaaay to many people that are afraid of there animals being bitten, which of course no one wants, but the occurrenes of it are so small and yet they are made so large that the new ball python community is petrified of feeding live animals to there snakes. I need to point everyone here. Please go and find Brian Barczyk's second interview and listen to what he says about how he feeds his ball pythons. It is about 15-20 into the interview for those of you that do not have patients. What he says would make most new people and people that frozen prey to there animals skin get goose bumps. Again not to say that he is right and people that feed frozen are wrong but just to try to deflate this over blown fear of feeding live prey. I would highly advise people new and old to listen to Reptile Radio if you have never heard of it. It is very informative and give you views from regular folks to large breeders and will definitely open your eyes to a lot of things as long as you go in with your mind open. Its a once a week radio show that is an hour long and it is well worth your time if you are any kind of hobbyist or pet owner wanting knowledge about reptiles in general.