Quote Originally Posted by Adam_Wysocki View Post
Well color me lucky I guess.
np. :-)


The way I feed and have my animals dialed in, the rodent never does get a chance ... 99.99% of the time, my snakes lunge out of their tubs and snatch the rodent off of the tongs throwing coils around them so fast if you blink you'll miss it. Most of them have to be lifted back in to the tub because they are dangling in mid air wrapped around the rodent. I have less than a handful of animals that need to eat in the privacy of their own tubs with no one around and for them, reducing stress by leaving the enclosure in tact is critical.
Interesting - off the tongs eh? Is this because of your routine and pre-scenting? I do a little bit of pre-scenting but I have limited it because I drop the rodent in and have had problems with my snakes striking the glass and/or screen top. However, they are always aware it's coming. Also, my BP isn't that aggressive. He doesn't require privacy but he's very much into waiting for the ambush.

My guess would be that the problem is more about your "routine" than anything to do with "obstacles in the kill zone" ... your snake has evolved over millions of years to be one of the most efficient predators in the history of this planet ... things in it's way aren't a problem ... it's having live rodents thrown into it's environment unexpectedly that usually messes them up.
See above. My other snakes (including my juvenile corn) have a "come and get it" attitude. This is not true with my Sep '06 BP. He's a great eater and has only refused a meal once.

Why would you believe that I don't have snakes set up in decorative enclosures?
I was speaking generally - I imagined you might.

I have no idea ... I only work with ball pythons.
Yea, I figured this. However, I added something about larger snakes because my point is about blanket claims around the safety of live feeding.

Your questions seem to be based all around things going wrong after the rodent is presented to the snake ... what I advocate is to prepare your snake in advance and there won't be any time for the rodent to do anything. If live feedings are done properly by the keeper, the rodent should be out of commision fractions of a second after being presented to the ball python. That's how I do it at least.
I would agree with this but I still feel like something is missing. I can buy that a snake taking a rodent off of the tongs is safer primarily because you are practially guaranteeing a strike on the front half of the prey's body. However, you didn't seem to think that this was key. I don't feed my snakes "un-awares" and so I still can't see what I'd be doing different from you.