What do you think on this subject? I know i will always feed my snakes and lizards live mice. A lot of caresheets say prekilled mice. I use live mice because it is a lot more interesting and think that snakes should be able to be kept in a habitat that is almost exactly like it is outside. They won't find prekilled outside and if they do, they ain't gonna eat it. People say that the mouse can harm your snake. My family have never had a problem with that out of the; Burmese Python,Ball Python,Indigo Snake,Corn Snake,California Kingsnake and Savannah Monitor we have had.What are you thoughts on this.
you will find some very strong opinions to this subject. i own four snakes the corn and ksb will eat prekilled,f/t and live. the bp's(royals) are trying to make the switch to f/t, but still giving me grief. I prefer f/t because it is cheaper, because i just started two colonies of mice(1m/3f )and have no babies yet. As far as a corny finding a nest with a dead baby mouse or anole, they are in my opinion opportunistic(spell) hunters. I once killed my baby mice in a bag and hit to hard against a wall, made a bit of a mess, but the corny still gobbeled the bits up.they will eat a dead pinkie if they have the chance. anyways i give my bp's a stunned mouse first and as they swallow the hind end i put a f/t right behind it. with a bit of luck they just keep on swallowing.
In my opinion there is no valid reason to feed live. Feeding live usually benefits or entertains the keeper, not the snake. Snakes are oportunistic feeders, and may go for weeks without a meal in the wild, therefore they will eat a dead animal if they come across one. Many snakes in the wild die from wounds inflicted by prey, and also die from transmitted diseases. The same thing can happen in captivity. You may have not have had a proplem yet, but you will eventually. Why take the chance? It took weeks to convert my Childrens python to thawed mice, and while I was trying to make the switch, she got bit. It wasn't bad, but I still felt horrible and had to treat the bite with neosporin. She was lucky, she could have been nailed in the eye. When a snake is captive, the rules of the game change. It is up to us as keepers to do everything in our power to keep our charges healthy and safe.
I'm sorry, but feeding live because it's 'interesting' is a very, very poor excuse. Why cause that poor mouse/rat/rabbit needless suffering just for your own entertainment? I won't feed live if there is ANY other option. I raise my own breeders, and have a C02 chamber that I humanely euthanize all my feeders with. It's quick, painless, and there is ZERO chance of a 'mistake' like you can have with smacking something against a wall to stun it, or worse, feeding 'straight' live. Adult mice can maim a snake, and adult rats will KILL a snake if there's a 'misfire' on the strike. Hearing about people who feed live just so they can watch 'the kill' sickens me, because that is one of the main points that animal-lovers can raise against herpetoculturists. If we present ourselves as bloodthirsty, ignorant people who will eagerly watch their snake kill another animal just for the thrill, how are we EVER going to be respected as the hard-working caregivers that we ought to be? I have been keeping reptiles for more than half of my life, and in the 15 years I've worked with snakes, I have had to deal with more flack from mammal-lovers over the subject of live feeding than I have for ANY OTHER ISSUE. And on the subject of scavenging in the wild... I fully believe that reptiles are opportunistic eaters. Why waste valuable energy and risk mortal injury chasing that rat/vole/mouse, when there's a nice, tasty dead squirrel sitting right next to you? And how can you equate your snake's life in captivity, which is lived out in (ideally) perfect, unchanging conditions, with ample access to fresh water, secure hides, and frequent meals, to what their life would be like in the wild? There is NO way that you can perfectly replicate life in the wild. Feeding live doesn't benefit the snake in ANY way, if anything you may be sentencing your snake to a painful death by blood loss and subsequent infections just because you wanted to watch it kill that helpless little animal. Please, please, switch your animals to F/T. All of the species that you claim to work with will readily take f/t rodents with a little bit of dedication on your part, and you are ensuring a safer, pain-free feeding experience for ALL creatures involved.
I totally agree with begunwithaletter, she hit the spot there perfectly. Over here in the UK, it is actually illegal to feed live, and i'm really glad that is the law. I know for a fact if it wasn't in place, you'd get idiots getting a snake b/c is raises their "street credit" and they'd feed live mice, just to be "cool." Even if those laws were not in place, i wouldn't feed live. It causes uneccessary pain to the animal, where they could be humanely euthanised.
I've always fed live, not because I wanted the entertainment (well, OK, I'll be honest, at first it was for the entertainment), but because I didn't kow how my wife would react to a freezer w/ DEAD MICE next to her lasagna frozen dinner. Now as my collection grows, it's getting more expensive to feed live, especially as I've got 3 snakes ('05 Speckled King, '06 Great Basin Gopher and an 0?Mojave Glossy) that are eating like pigs right now! I still don't know how my wife will accept rodents in the freezer, but I guess I'll be finding out soon cuz I just ordered $50 worth of fuzzies and hoppers from Big Cheese Rodents. reako45
Also think a cornered animal (like a mouse) has no where to run so it is twice as likely to attack. Snakes it the wild can roam where ever they want to get away from a rodent but in a captive enviorment they a confined and can't get away if they aren't hungry. Anyway why risk it feeding frozen is cheaper, easier, less smell and most importantly safer for your (fingers and) snake. Azza
yo reako u could plan on going out and buying a mini freezer or something to put the mice in......an put it somewhere in ur house... instead of putting the mice in the freezer/refrigerator u have your own food in
If my snakes will eat F/t they will get F/t but my baby dumerils WILL NOT eat f/t no matter what. i feed them Live.. but when they are adults they seem to prefer F/t. all my other snakes get F/t
But is being trapped in a glass box with an angry rodent and Humans all around natural eating habits? no. I didn't think so. Interesting to you but it can be terrifing to a snake and if the snake isn't hungry Mr. Mouse gets a puchbag... Azza
RE: Re: Live or Prekilled? First of All, I said almost exactly, i keep my cages as close as it would be in the wild. Also i have been feeding live mice to my snakes for SO MANY years and none of them got sick or hurt. I just wanted to know what your thoughts were. I don't need advice on feeding my pets after i have had a knigsnake for 20 years that has never even bit anyone and has never been fed pre-killed before. The only reason some of our pets died is because we bought a 55 gallon tank. We washed it and cleaned it, but everything that went into that tank died from a cold, so after the indigo snake we had died we threw the tank out. It had nothing to do with live. We fed live to a Burmese Python,Indigo Snake,Corn Snake,Ball Python and California Kingsnake and none of them have EVER been hurt by the mouse. First of all, in the wild do you think 7 foot Black Rat Snakes are going to be afraid of a chipmunk or little bird. They are ambush predators and they actually wait for live things, they dont see a mouse,get scared and slither away. If snakes were afraid of their prey there won't be any snakes here. Also, dont think i would leave mice in with my snake. I have a tank that if my snake does not want to eat i put the mice in. I will stop feeding my snakes live when one gets hurt but, think about 20 years of snakes not getting hurt in my hands. My california kingsnake is so kind it actually comes out and likes to be pet on the head and it has not mistaken my hand for food. When there is a post up that says "Hurt Snake" then you can say "I told you so".
RE: Re: Live or Prekilled? lol wow this topic always raises ALOT of response. hahhah. well IMO i believe its up the the owner. my bp will eat both. i have fed him live on occasion as a treat. i find live is alot messier then f/t. anything that gets killed WILL crap and piss themselves. so there is alway a mess to deal with after. but i figure WITH PROPER SUPERVISION there shouldn't be a problem. never leave a live mouse in the cage unattended, SHOULD GO WITH OUT SAY. but this is just my two cents. to each is own, if you want to feed live, then do it, if you want to feed f/t then do it.
RE: Re: Live or Prekilled? I keep seeing all the mentions of "close to natural habitat" and "in the wild". The simple fact is that when we keep snakes as pets, it is neither of those things. They are captive pets. It really doesn't make much difference how a wild snake would react because we're not dealing with wild snakes. Sure, the snakes still hold onto their natural instincts, but they've been bred into captivity and conditioned for it. F/t or live? It's your choice, but f/t, in my opinion, is the way to go for both the snake and the mouse.
RE: Re: Live or Prekilled? I have to agree with you on this one. It annoys me to see owners who like to feed live, just because they can. Or to show-off to friends etc. IMO, thats just totally irresponsible, and those are the type of snake keepers i will never envy. I don't mean to sound rude here, but how in the world can a live rodent be a TREAT? Its probably going to be MORE stressful to the snake. I am glad of the laws in the UK which prevent us from feeding live rodents to our snakes. I'm not saying it DOESN'T happen, but it's much less of an apparent issue over here.
RE: Re: Live or Prekilled? how can something he does natural be stressful, that doesnt make sense lol. i dont mean to open a can here, but it is somin he does in the wild. ya he lives in a controlled environment, but the idea is to mimic his environment to the fullest so he doesnt get stressed. id say a snake would be more healthy if he gets the kill. more like his environment. lol.
RE: Re: Live or Prekilled? He aint in the wild. It is like asking all the people to go kill their own cow/pig.
RE: Re: Live or Prekilled? ya, and i know of some that do. still dont see the big deal like a few of us said, owner choice
RE: Re: Live or Prekilled? The big deal is feeding live to a CB snake, can cause more harm than good. "getting a kill" as you put it will NOT make a snake healthier. If a snake owner decided to feed live over F/T when the snake WILL take F/T, i find that an irresponsible decision. In some cases, it may be neccessary to feed live to problem feeders, but if a snake will take F/T i find thats the best option for it.
RE: Re: Live or Prekilled? I don't have the time right now to go through and read all the posts, but I've read through a few, and I've been through debates like this before. I certainly know where I stand on this. F/T is cheaper to buy, easier and cheaper to keep and store, less likely to spread disease or illness from the prey, and could never inflict injury to your pet. Live on the other hand offers none of those things. Not only is f/t safer and healthier for the reptile, but the prey is put down humanely before it's frozen instead of having the air drained from it's lungs and suffocated to death... The fun part about keeping snakes for the owner is certainly not killing small animals, or at least it shouldn't be... Now it's one thing if a snake absolutely refuses to eat f/t, it would obviously be better in that case to feed live than to starve the snake. But it also really makes a big difference if the live is fed responsibly (prey at least stunned, owner watching closely to keep his/her snake safe, etc.). When I have had to feed live (I work at a petstore), I've had to break up a couple feedings because the prey got too aggressive. And no matter how fast you are, that live prey could inflict a fatal wound to your pet in a split second. Although some of them ate live before I had them, all 33 of my snakes eat f/t with no problems... As far as being "fun" to feed live, honestly it's more of a "rush" for the keeper feeding f/t, because for example I feed all of mine by hand. It's one thing to be entertained by watching a snake kill a mouse, but it's another to hold the thawed mouse/rat/rabbit by the tail and let the snake strike it out of your hand. If entertainment is what you're after, there it is...
