Dont feed live!

[unknownclown]

Ok Im pretty sure taht every one here knows that its preferable to feed F/T or F/K (Frozen /thawed & fresh/killed) but some of you may be lazy like me. Yes Im lazy Im not gonna give any exscuses cause there is no exscuse.

I just had a feeding day that left me swearing I will never feed my snakes live again!

PLEASE DONT READ IF YOU ARE VERY SENSITIVE TO DETAILS WHICH INVOLVE SNAKES EATING! If this doesnt apply to ya feel free to skip this

First off I started with a rat pup I reached in the enclosure I keep them and the mother sunk her teeth into my thumb YEEEEOUCH! I put it in with my male Ball python and he went, for some reason, for the rats right arm and started twisting trying to coil on it not at all constricting on the body of the rat. I thought he was gonna tear the arm off

it was brutal the rat went limp and he went and started eating after he got the head and forarms down the rat woke up BLECH it went down kickin the whole way. Deffinately NOT COOL! I was afraid it would start biting down or scratching on something inside my snakey.

Ok so then it was then time for my boa to eat. She eats small to medium rats. I put her into the designated feeding tank, go get a rat, put it into a plastic bag ready to whack and kill it before I put it in with the snake. I swung it and then I felt bad and chickened out so I took the rat out and dropped it into the tank with Hugs my boa. Hugs dives for it in a matter of seconds, bites it right in the side and coils leaving the rats mouth free to bite her. Which it did 2 or 3 times I reached in to get its mouth off of my snake and the sucker bites me too

OUCH That HURT! I try and break its neck but cant so I have no choice but to sit there holding the scruff of the rats neck to keep control of the rat.
MAN how AWFUL!!!

I have vowed feeding live is just plain crazyand inexcusable ! Its way too stressful and I dont wanna deal with it anymore!!!!
If anyone out there feeds live please reconsider its very dangerous and I can vouch for the snakes getting bitten, it realy hurts!! This is not a freak thing and it does happen even if you are standing right there to help out. Of course most people dont realize they need to reach in and help until their snake is bein chomped on

by that time it could lose an eye or later get a serious infection and i dont know about everybody's areas but here finding a good knowlegeable herp vet is almost impossible.
ok Ill get of my soap box now

I hope I didnt gross anybody out too much

 

[goldtrap2690]

i've had no problems feeding my ball python , regius live rats . althought there have been 1 times where things have gone wrong . 1 time i thought that regius could handle big rats so i fedd him a large rat and it bit him on the neck while he was coiling on him , good thing it was a shallow wound and it healed quickly . another time was when i brought a small rat and it jumped out of its bag before i could feed it to regius and 2 days later my uncle found him in the bathroom ( don't ask me what he was doin in there

) it was crawling on his toes and he caught it and woke me up in the moring and i fed it to regius , but i hope the rat did'nt east the poison my mom set up , she also saw the rat , i should've told her that imlost it except of keeping it a secret .

 

[Slizarus]

I don't know how you can whack a rat in a plastic bag I can't even bring myself to kill them. (usually)
Problems happen we had a vicious male rat when we were breeding them we decided we didn't want to put up with it anymore so we fed it to baby our boa....................
The @#$%^&* rat ba#@%^& chomped on her midside and into her flesh b4 we could rescue her the rat ate nearly to her spine. so we went out took a shot gun and had fun with the rat....jk..(I wish we could have) we kept it waited till baby healed completely and tryed it again this time baby dived in and killed it merely by smothering it.
I've never known mice to hurt a snake just rats and ants.

I still feed live though because I can't stand the smell of boiling mice or even thinking the mouse may explode in the cup.............................................eeeeeewwwwwww....

 

[cephalotus88]

Boiling mice? lol, what are you talkin' bout? To thaw em, i just place a frozen mouse in a baggy and float it over hot/warm water. It thaws in 10 minutes or so.

As for feeding live, it is quite safe it feed live mice pinkies and fuzzies (without eyes opened) and rat pinks, and fuzzy (with eyes not opened). They are blind so cannot "find" the snake. Actually, live pinks often prevoke a non-feedding snake to eat.

The only drawback with Frozen is that you have to keep em somehwere, like me, i keep mine next to the frozen ice-cream

 

[elgecko]

I do not have any snakes. I did once and a while feed my Leopard Geckos pinkies before breeding season. Of course the pinkies can not do any damage as an adult might be able to.
It was kinda sad to be taking the poor innocent pinkie from it's mother and hearing it squeek as the gecko chomps on it.

 

[Slizarus]

I just don't like feeding dead mice/rats to anything 'cept large boids

 

[LOs Angels Traphole]

Can anyone of you guys lend me your snake, I have a mouse problem that is never ending in my home.