If you feed live...how?

[bearhart]

I hate explaining this cuz someone gets huffy, but here goes. You hold their tail, you swing your arm/wrist like a frisbie in the direction of some hard surface making sure their noggin takes the brunt of the impact, and they either freeze up or start to shake. Snake goes right for them w/o injury, cuz they're "stunned".

Some call it cruel, but I'd consider it more cruel to have it take chunks out of my beloved snake. It's gonna die either way, so I just make it easier and safer for the snake.

I then make the analogy - take a staple remover, clamp it down on your wrist, and twist until chunks of flesh comes off... that's what that "poor defenseless" rat could do to your snake... multiple times.

That's how I justify stunning.

I did stunned tonight. My olive has been taking oral meds and it was really starting to piss her off (not good w/ a 10' snake). Also, she quit taking F/T most likely due to the effect of the meds and/or stress.

So, I talked with the vet and he suggested feeding her very small dosed prey items each day instead. So, I decided to try stunned.

I went to my pet store, discussed it with them, and was lucky enough to get a demonstration on a mouse that was already on his way to a monitor's stomach.

It required much less force and was much less "messy" than I thought it would be. At home, I took my small rat, whacked it on the head with a small wrench, and then injected the anti-biotics into the scruff of its neck. Then, I dumped it in the tub and my snake at it right away. In my nervousness, I probably hit it a bit too hard because it barely moved afterwards and I wanted a bit more activity out of it so that my snake would be sure to constrict it first. In any case, it was 10x better than orally introducing the meds via feeding tube.

I agree that its not a particularly appealing procedure. However, I have to say that the most commonly cited risk of the prey waking up P.O.'d seems way overblown. It doesn't take much of a whack and the rodent is in a state that its never coming back from. Also, I did not get the impression that the prey was really suffering. In fact, I don't think it was really "there" so to speak. Ultimately, I felt that the stunned rodent actually goes through less suffering than the live-fed one.