Feeding day for my snow corn snake

skittledoo

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#1
Disclaimer! Feeding pics in this thread.


My aunt and I seem to be having a bit of a debate over the fact that I feed my snakes frozen/thawed instead of live. Apparently I'm ruining my snakes lives by not allowing them to be real hunters and the only reason I don't feed live MUST be because I just don't want to see them eat live. Oh boy. How do you make a live feeder snake owner understand your reasonings for feeding frozen/thawed? FWIW I have no qualms at all about watching a snake eat live, but I think it can be risky to feed live since the captive snake has no way of escaping if the rodent decides to attack in defense. I've heard too many stories of snakes getting badly injured or killed from rodent attacks. My aunt reminds me it's not too late to make my hatchling male a real hunter and start feeding him live... Oh boy.

Anyways, I pulled Aneira out for her scheduled feeding tonight. I decided to snap a few pics.

She gets fed in a separate tub since I keep her on aspen and don't want her to accidentally swallow the aspen.


She's so pretty


Tried putting a blanket under the bin as a backdrop...








Feeding time

It may be dead already, but she still "hunts" it








*more*
 

Dizzy

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#3
She is gorgeous.

You're not ruining her at all, you're actually being a decent owner. Live feeding is heavily frowned upon in the UK.
 

skittledoo

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#5
This snake is amazing and she will forever be my girl.... But Omg I'm so falling in love with my new little guy and I totally can't wait to see how he matures. I should start a progression thread for him since they change SO much from hatchling to sub adult to adult. He's so easy to handle as well and not quite as fiesty as some hatchlings I've handled before though he is a squirmy little bugger
 

SarahHound

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#6
Pretty snake! My friend has an Anery Cornsnake, they are such pretty creatures.

Glad you're not feeding live, I don't like it at all. It is illegal to feed live here. Is there a reasoning between feeding mice with fur and mice without fur, or is it just a preference thing?
 

skittledoo

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#7
All the adult mice I feed have fur. I've never fed adult mice without fur so I'm not exactly sure. My hatchling is currently on pinkies which are newborn mice and they are naked.
 

SarahHound

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#8
I know nothing about snakes and feeding them, maybe the ones my friend feeds are just smaller so they have no fur. Her snake is 2 years old now though so I thought she would be eating adults.
 

lizzybeth727

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#9
My friend feeds live mice to her snakes, IMO it's horrible. Once she fed live rats (they're red-tail boas, they eat a LOT of mice), that was even worse since I've actually had rats as pets. :( Even she didn't like feeding the rats, though, she said she'd never feed live rats again. Anyway, she says she's tried feeding frozen/thawed mice but the snakes won't eat them.
 

skittledoo

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#10
There are lots of ways to try and switch a snake over to frozen if they are refusing it. You can try things like teasing the snake with the mouse by wiggling the rodent called the zombie dance. You can brain them. I heard anole sheds on thawed mice sometimes will encourage feeding though I'm not positive why that is. Another thing she can try is if they refuse the thawed they can hold off even longer until the snake is really hungry and try again. Some snakes like their meals warmer than others as well. I know Maxfox keeps snakes so she may have more advice to add that may help your friend successfully switch to f/t if she sees this thread.
 

skittledoo

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#12
Erm... by this logic, is it also inhumane to not let our dogs and cats hunt their own food? LOL!


Aneira is gorgeous as always. :)
Haha ya I think I might need to start sending Bamm and Cricket out to get their own dinner from now on. Lol.

Thank you so much. I'm glad she had put on a little weight since I got her. She was a tad skinny when I got her and now she looks great IMO.

Oh I finally picked up my new little guy I was telling you about :) he's perfect!
http://chazhound.com/forums/showthread.php?t=147689
 

maxfox426

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#14
I knew a girl in high school that would buy live mice for her rat snake then knock them out before giving them to the snake. Is it more common to feed live ot frozen?
That is kind of a hard question to answer. LOL! In dedicated reptile groups and breeder circles, F/T (frozen/thawed) is the norm. Especially when you are talking with large-scale snake breeding facilities, because it's much quicker to feed several animals at once when you are dealing with F/T rather than live.

However, if you aren't involved with any community like that, it's more common to hear about feeding live, and for reasons like Skittle's aunt believes in. (Mostly information handed out by pet stores selling the animals.)

Feeding live isn't necessarily bad. Even the most experienced snake keepers will occasionally have an animal in their collection that simply refuses pre-killed prey, and it's better that than let them starve.

Your example of stunning the animal prior to feeding I personally find as an acceptable solution... just not one that I would personally be willing to do. LOL! I'd rather just buy the frozen mice and not have to working about disabling a live one.
 

sillysally

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#15
That's interesting. I was curious because I was recently at Petco and one of the employees was trying to talk a snake owner out of feeding the live rat he was about to buy.

How do they kill the frozen ones? Are there chemicals to worry about? Do snakes need to eat other things or can they live their whole lives on mice and rats?
 

maxfox426

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#16
There are other things snakes CAN eat, but it really is not necessary. Mice/rats for life is just fine for them. However, it is important that they get the whole mouse/rat, because they need the bones/organs in order to get the complete package of nutrition.

As for how the mice are pre-killed, typically they are gassed with CO2 and then flash frozen, so chemical residue is not an issue. That said, it never hurts to look into your frozen mouse source to find out for certain.
 

Picklepaige

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#17
Is there anything you can feed besides rats?

I really want a snake, but I can't bring myself to feed rats. I would have no problems feeding mice, hamsters, rabbits, chicks, etc, but I love rats way too much.
 

maxfox426

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#18
Is there anything you can feed besides rats?

I really want a snake, but I can't bring myself to feed rats. I would have no problems feeding mice, hamsters, rabbits, chicks, etc, but I love rats way too much.
The important thing is that the prey you choose is an appropriate size for the snake eating it. For my cornsnakes (and other species of similar size), mice are perfectly fine. Bigger snakes need bigger food, but that doesn't have to be a rat. :)
 

skittledoo

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#19
Exactly. I think majority of corn snakes tend to stay on mice their whole lives and don't get big enough to really need to feed rats to.

I used to have a ball python and really want another one someday. I also would love a pine snake as well though I think corn snakes will remain my favorites.

One more pic. Just because I love her yellow freckles so much I had to have a closeup
 

sillysally

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#20
There are other things snakes CAN eat, but it really is not necessary. Mice/rats for life is just fine for them. However, it is important that they get the whole mouse/rat, because they need the bones/organs in order to get the complete package of nutrition.

As for how the mice are pre-killed, typically they are gassed with CO2 and then flash frozen, so chemical residue is not an issue. That said, it never hurts to look into your frozen mouse source to find out for certain.
My friend used to work at a pet store and took in a sickly rat as a pet because the store manager was just going to stick the rat live into a bag and put him in the freezer live for snake food.

So as snake owners, what do you do with your snakes? Is is kind of like fish, where you are setting up a proper and attractive environment and observe them? Do snakes enjoy being interacted with?
 

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