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live mice ok?

I am so glad school has started again.... someone needs some serious help with spelling :bang:

yep... being really rude to someone who is trying to help is the first and best way to not be helped by Anyone...
 
bri123 said:
ok what ever i was looking at stuff and im sure i no whats right now u say that your just trying to take care of my snake but ur just mad and want to be rude.
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You are so correct, we all just sit hear all day figuring out how we can be rude to new people on this forum who want to learn about taking care of corn snakes. :rolleyes: susan
 
Not helping in any way?
Before this topic took this turn we have done nothing but help you in every single one of your topics, till of course they degraded to us being frustrated with you.
 
bri123 said:
ok but you wernt helping any way you were just makeing me upset
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What you are saying is we didn't give you the answers you wanted to your questions. Because I would have to agree with Jen we did try to help you, in this thread and others.
 
susang said:
I'm sorry I have never heard of mice giving snakes mites, could you gvie me a referance.
Don't you think the advice to feed live but watch it closely is a little questionable, not to mention a healthy mouse (more inclined to want to fight for its life). Would you stick your hand in with a snake trying to eat while a mouse is attacking the snake, good way to get bitten yourself.
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All I can tell you is that I know two people personally who got mites from pet store mice. I thought this was a common problem :shrugs:

I would not want my snakes to eat unhealthy mice, and would not advice others to feed it either. If this kid wants to feed live, it's better that he does it knowing a few basic things. Prekilled would of course be alot better, but if you are going to feed live you have to watch closely. Most times it does go good feeding live, if there is a problem you'll be there to fix it, or atleast minimize the injury. Risky business for both parties :twoguns:
 
Lol, I do not see a problem with feeding your snakes live. Personally I find it much easier for some snakes to accept live food items much easier then the f/t items. You do for one have to be very careful with your snake decides to strike at the mouse sometimes they end up grabbing them from the back side leaving their mouth somewhat exposed opening the snake up for a possible bite but what you can do is before you drop in the mouse stun it! Flick the little sucker in the head with your finger or with the end of a pin. Just the twitching alone will interest the snake and they will more then likely take a bite.
 
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I haven't seen any real evidence that feeding live mice is really bad. Sure there are a few pictures, but I can always tell if my snake is hungry or not based on how he reacts when I hold the mouse close to his head. He gets in the defensive strike pose every time. As long as you keep an eye on the feeding process the whole time, I do not think there is anything wrong with it. I think there are many other things that are much more dangerous to snakes including escaping from cages. Where are all of those pictures? The pictures of the half decayed dehydrated snakes? In my opinion, if you want to feed F/T, that's great. If not, I still think that's great.
I personally think that most people have just heard that feeding live is such a horrible thing that everybody assumes it is true. I am not a heartless person. I care about my snake very much. I just honestly do not see a mouse as a threat to him. Everybody can feel free to disagree, but I wanted to share a different point of view. As for the well being of the mouse, that is a valid point if you feel bad for the mice. I do not enjoy the mice dying, but I do not feel bad either. So take this for what you will. Some people consider it an unnecessary risk, but I will disagree with them.
 
You cannot say there are not positives to feeding f/t as opposed to live other than the odd snake. I know that my mice have no mites or worms. They were frozen. You cant say that about your mice. No matter how careful your breeding program or now trustful you are of your pet store.

Bri, search the forums for pictures of what can happen when a mouse attacks. Its your choice but you should make sure you see what can happen to your snake. It can happen even if your supervising. A bite only takes a second. The infection later will kill or deform.
 
susang said:
What you are saying is we didn't give you the answers you wanted to your questions. Because I would have to agree with Jen we did try to help you, in this thread and others.
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i no and im sorry i shouldnt of been rude now i realize its just for the sake of my corn please forgive me i bougt a book and read it all i think i no what im doing now
 
Since our snakes are kept in a captive environment, why expose them to any sort of potentially hazardous situation? Even though getting attacked by mice is not an everyday, common occurrence, why in the world would you even want to take that risk? It is our responsibility as snake owners to care for them in a way that benefits them due to the fact that they are kept in cages, they are not out in the wild.

Feeding f/t is beneficial in every way. Its safer for your snake, its more humane for the mice, and its easier on our pocketbooks because you can buy f/t in bulk. The only reason I can see for people to even want to feed live, is for their own sadistic pleasure of seeing a snake kill and eat a live mouse. I do understand that not all snakes will eat f/t, and there is not a whole lot one can do in those situations. Otherwise, why risk it? :shrugs:
 
I don't know if feeding a twitching mouse qualifies as feeding live. I would consider that prekilled, even though it's still in the process..
But even as an advocate of feeding pk or ft only, I do have to kind of say that I think we push the danger of biting a bit too hard. Someone who stands at the cage and watches the snake to make sure he's interested, and then watches further till the mouse has been eaten is not going to wind up with a snake in the condition of the pictures that keep getting thrown around on here.
A bite is possible, and because of the closeness of the snakes face to the animal, worst case scenario would be a lost eye or infection. The actual bite that can do your snake in could be so much less dramatic, in fact you may not even notice it, so the danger is real regardless.
Something in me always objects to flashing these pictures of obvious neglect where mice were left in with snakes and unsupervised. I think it's a little bit dishonest actually to say that is the result of feeding live, even though I agree with the actual point that live feeding even with a small risk, is too much risk to accept.

I don't feed live because it's very inconvenient. I don't want live mice in my house for even a second. I don't want my snakes catching worms. I don't want to pay what they want for live mice. My snakes are thriving on FT mice. While it does seem clear to me that they prefer to eat live, given the choice, they are my pets and I get to choose what's best for them. Also we're talking about corn snakes here. It isn't really hard to get them to eat FT.
 
Well I think the reason we play "look this is horrible it's disgusting" even though it's not very likely to happen is most of these people are completely new.
And some of them have absolutly no clue what they're doing. It's better to scare them off from something to save the snake.
 
OK...Yes, there is a risk in feeding live. It may not be as large a risk as some make it sound, but it is present, none the less. There are benefits to feeding either F/T or live, depending upon your needs at the moment. I prefer to feed F/T whenever possible. The risk of transmitting parasites is decreased. There is no chance of a snake being bitten by a F/T mouse. But most importantly, frozen mice are less expensive, especially for those keepers that are feeding more than just a couple of snakes.

However, there are some reasons why I would feed live on occasion. Most often, it is for the occasional snake that has gone off F/T temporarily. Most often, it is a breeder female that is recovering from egg laying that needs to eat, but just doesn't want F/T. It happens sometimes. The next usual circumstances where I would feed live, or more usually "kicking just a bit", is when I'm either low on F/T or have just gone through my rodent colonies and collected feeders on feeding day and it's easier for me to just go ahead and feed instead of going through the extra time needed to bag those up and take frozen out and thaw them.

Feeding live is fine, IMO, as long as the snake is being monitored during the feeding and eating process. The big problems occur when the live mouse or rat is just thrown in with the snake and the snake isn't looked at again for a day or so.

And as a side note, even small bites can become fatal...and they don't have to be caused by a mouse or rat. I had a female develop an abscess after the male bit her during mating. The occasional "love bite" happens with no ill effects, but this one was different. It took awhile for the abscess to develop, remaining small for most of the period the female was gravid. And because she was gravid, the vet didn't want to put her on any antibiotics for fear of causing a problem. She continued to eat and behave normally until she laid her eggs. She was given 10 days after laying to eat a couple of meals and build up some weight, even though she was still in fairly good condition after laying. The abscess was then lanced, the wound flushed and she was put on Baytril injections every 3 days. The wound seemed to be healing and she had a second post-laying shed and seemed to be doing well. However, she then stopped eating and the abscess returned just to the side of the original wound. Back to the vet, the new abscess was lanced and a sample taken for a culture and sensitivity. However, she died over-night so I canceled the $100 test before it was sent out.
 
sargeoif said:
Lol, dude face it some snakes will ONLY eat live animals, its just their preferance.
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And on the other hand, I have witnessed with my very own eyes wild caught snakes, including a one eyed black racer captured as an adult, readily adapt to thawed food.

I really liked "one-Eyed Jack". He was so tame anyone could handle him!
 
sargeoif said:
Lol, dude face it some snakes will ONLY eat live animals, its just their preferance.
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who are you replying to? I see where anybody suggested all snakes will accept dead.
 
Is it really that obvious attackturlte, I was talking to you it all depends on the owner, who cares if someone wants to feed their snakes live animals, its either the snake kills and eats the food or it comes already kill and all you do is thaw it out. It all goes to the same place so... who cares people.
 
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