I won a CD from Darkest of Hillside Thickets when they had a "What's The Grossest Thing You've Ever Seen?" contest, for the things I had to do to get my ball python to eat. And I've been published on the subject.
Hmm, impressive. I've only had trouble with Spike (my eldest) eating his rat. My youngest, Jake eats perfectly fine (and is quite people friendly). Never have I had to destruct their food in anyway, except Spike's whom I've had to spill a little blood, the dumbie.
Actually, of all the snakes I've had (around 10 total; the most I ever had at one time was 7), the only one who was a picky eater was a probably-wild-caught ball python. My redtail boa would eat anything, and often happily devoured the rats the ball python had turned up his nose at.
Hell, he ate a piece of chicken once.
And my corn snakes would eat live pinkies backwards. They'd kick and squeal the whole way down. My leopard gecko would do the same thing.
hahaha! Now who would give a snake a dead rat! I totally understand what he's complaining about. Part of the pleasure of eating is watching your prey struggle. ;)
Live rats are more expensive than frozen, for one. And live rodents can fight back. More than one snake has died from wounds inflicted by a feisty would-be dinner. Unless the snake in question absolutely refuses prekilled prey, it's far safer to feed them dead rodents.
I had a problem feeder, and for his protection, I'd break the rodent's (usually gerbils or hamsters, he'd rarely take rats) back to make it less likely to hurt him.
Sometimes I was able to get my old ball python to eat rats by scenting them with substrate from a gerbil cage.
My corns were gluttons! I remember one of them eating four pinkies at a go, when she was just a wee thing. Lovely creature, too, Okeetee morph, looked like a living flame. My redtail boa was an eating machine too. He ate a piece of (raw) chicken once.
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Hell, he ate a piece of chicken once.
And my corn snakes would eat live pinkies backwards. They'd kick and squeal the whole way down. My leopard gecko would do the same thing.
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I had a problem feeder, and for his protection, I'd break the rodent's (usually gerbils or hamsters, he'd rarely take rats) back to make it less likely to hurt him.
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Whereas my cornsnake and my two California kings eat like pros.
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My corns were gluttons! I remember one of them eating four pinkies at a go, when she was just a wee thing. Lovely creature, too, Okeetee morph, looked like a living flame. My redtail boa was an eating machine too. He ate a piece of (raw) chicken once.
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