Well it sounds sensible to me mate.

 

why not!!

 

I've used live pinks a few times to kick-start 'non' feeding small snakes. Personally, for small stuff that would benefit from a pinkie I would prefer to offer a live pink before I thought about force feeding but that's only a personal opinion.

 

Whilst it's not ideal, I see where you're coming from, and if I had to feed live, I would feed something smaller, like a Pinkie, or rat pup, in theory there is less threat.

 

as long as you watch what the snake and prey are doing constantly whilst in together and as long as you treat both with the amount of respect theres no reason to restrict the size of the prey. But, as you say, it needs to be done as a very last resort. : victory:

 

If the snake is too big for defrost pinks then don't feed a live one if you can help it because the snakes are often aware the food item is small and just eats it alive.

A well fed and watered rodent isn't a threat to a snake, it's when the rodent is hungry and thirsty ie left in for days that you see these gory chewed up snake pics occur.

 

So the rat won't bite the snake to try defending itself? Of course it will!

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just putting feelers out just on the off chance

so if you were going to feed live then best to house it for a day or so and feed and water it than just feed it straight to the snake: victory:

 

Assuming you buy from a shop then just use it straight off, they'll have had food and water with them for the duration of their stay because what they don't sell they'll use and obviously a skanky rodent is no good to them either.

 

Do it!

 

A pinkie or rat pup is hardly a threat though is it? Blind and no teeth.... the snake will definitely be fine even if it doesn't take straight away

 

The person I quoted said use a larger rat than a pup, hence my issue. If a pup is an appropriate size for the snake there is no real chance of it harming it. If the snake is larger, a rat pup isn't really a proper meal and it might not even get eaten.

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It'd be better than force/assist feeding. It'd be ideal to try and wean it over to defrost after a few successful feeds, depends on how you feel about feeding live, and if you have a good supply.

 

We have fed live pinkies to our snakes -but that was to cull the pinkies -they wolf them down in a minute tops -which is faster than trying to freeze the poor things which can take 3 -30 minutes! (I can't stand the idea of freezing as a way to kill baby mice - it can be too slow in a home freezer and I know I'd never want to freeze to death)

 

In wonder if they go to sleep like we do? I would have thought freezing is relatively painless?

Not that I am intending to have to cull any mice... Just a musing...

 

cheers for the info

i understand that most are fine feeders and snakes will go off food for what we would think as long periods but they seem to be fine

last thing i want to do is go for a snake that i know can be fussy and not be able to sort it if the need arises better to ask than start to panic

at least this way i go into the royals with a good start just incase

my king is the only one to refuse a feed a week after i got him but a couple of days latter was back to eating

 

domestic freezer should be below -15 Dc but ill bet most aren’t pop them in one of these and its a slow rather painful death

blast freezer like the one we have here -34 Dc although the air temp in full action is -90 Dc takes an hour to freeze 20L of Hot soup

looking at my freezer bank now and most are running around -21 / -25 Dc
but these are catering freezers from what i remember most domestic freezers run at around -10 to -15 Dc or there about no way near cold enough to do this with at least for you to be able to class it as humane

 

The rodent COULD bite yes but how many times have you seen a snake kill prey be it on tv or in front of you and how many times have you seen a bite occur?

I've never seen it and I have live feeders here and I guess it doesn't happen much because the prey is too busy trying to breathe that it's not thinking about biting and normally it's got so many coils over it by the time it realises whats happened it can't move to bite.

As for proper snakes like carpets, yep most are dustbins but I've had one and taken in a few for people where they didn't feed and the normal tricks didn't work.

If it's needed it's needed and while it's always going to be better to do all the tips and tricks sometimes they won't work.