Feeding day for my snow corn snake

[skittledoo]

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*

[skittledoo]

The tail out of the mouth is always my favorite part. It's almost comical.

[Dizzy]

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.

[~Jessie~]

She's gorgeous! AWESOME pictures! The tail out of the mouth pictures are hilarious!

<3

[skittledoo]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.