Reasons to feed live food to your snake(s):
- The movement of the prey help stimulate the snakes natural feeding response.
- Don’t have to thaw out, and warm.
- If not eaten, just put it back in it’s cage.
- Tease feeding can be frustrating.
Reasons to feed Frozen/Thawed food:
- Freezing for 6 months or more will kill all common parasites.
- Cannot injure snake.
- If not eaten can be re-frozen (up to 2 times.)
- Economical.
- Don’t have to house and care for live rodents and their stinky cages.
- Face it, you wouldn’t want to die that way.
Feeding: Live vs Frozen was last modified: January 2nd, 2015 by
Even though it’s recommend to feed frozen, I feed almost exclusively live. It seems less time consuming when you have a large number of snakes.
I do however, try to keep a large number of frozen small rats in case rats are suddenly hard to come by. (I can’t grow all my own, with the number of snakes I keep.)
If I have to feed frozen/thawed rats, at least the snakes that will take them, can still eat when there is a rat drought. If they are hungry enough, they should take the frozen thawed. Since I do raise some of my own, even during droughts, I have a few live for the pickiest of my breeders.
It’s always a toss up as to feed live vs. frozen. If I can I always go for frozen/thawed. That being said I have a few BPs that will NOT take frozen.