I know this is a huge debate between people and whatever, but for the points being made here in this thread I'm going to put my two cents in.

Feeding live rats (anything above a crawler rat) is like playing russian roulette. Sure you can get lucky a hundred times, but it only takes one time to blow your brains out. I don't care how careful someone is, rats are fighters and will fight to the death if need be.

I don't condone live feeding with rats at all. Once a boa is moving up to the small rat stage, it's one in a thousand that will not eat a f/t...if that high of a percentage. So why take the added risk at all? I don't understand it at all. It's a risk, whatever way you want to put it....it's still a risk. Why do it?

I know this is going to set some people off, but frankly I don't care. This is my opinion and I feed hundreds of Boas weekly and I've never had a rat bite any of my snakes. I think I have some knowledge of what I'm talking about.