I'm not opposed to live feeding - but you have to pay attention to live feeding for the duration of the feed until the rodent is dead, because if the snake does not feel like eating, the rodent can damage the snake. It's much more of an issue with rats, but it can happen with mice.



Thawing frozen rodents is not difficult, and I've never ever heard of a snake becoming ill or dying because of an improperly thawed rodent.



You do need to make sure it is thawed all the way through and not still frozen in the middle - easily accomplished, thaw in room temperature water. When they are thawed, THEN use warm water to warm them up a bit.



With any decent sized collection, using f/t is a must because you really don't have time to monitor a large collection with live prey, and the cost of f/t is significantly lower than live.



Personally - if a snake will take f/t, the only circumstances under which I feed live is every other feeding for females I plan to breed the following year - and that's just to increase their muscle tone a bit. And many successful breeders don't even do that.
-----
I decided my old sig was too big.

[ Hide Replies ]

• Growth and Feeding Q - PhunkeyPhish, Mon Jul 14 14:11:22 2008
• RE: Growth and Feeding Q - FunkyRes, Mon Jul 14 15:01:44 2008
• RE: Growth and Feeding Q - madeofscars, Tue Jul 15 16:14:12 2008
• RE: Growth and Feeding Q - STEVES_KIKI, Tue Jul 15 17:08:42 2008
• RE: Growth and Feeding Q - FunkyRes, Tue Jul 15 19:18:49 2008
• RE: Growth and Feeding Q - draybar, Mon Jul 14 16:44:09 2008
• RE: Growth and Feeding Q - tspuckler, Mon Jul 14 18:23:10 2008