Live or dead ? That is the question

[MouseKilla]

This should just be a permanent thread because this topic will never go away. For those who are becoming annoyed I'd like to let them know that it isn't totally useless, people do change their minds because they've participated in or just read one of the hundreds of threads asking this same old question. My personal opinion has evolved on this because of these debates. At one time I fed live exclusively, now I feed f/k or very stunned prey. I have been shown the pictures and heard the horror stories and that has swayed me even though I have only ever had one minor bite to one of my snakes. Just from my own experience I judged that it was worth what I perceived to be a very small risk of minor injury to give the snakes as natural a life as I possibly could (while appreciating that I could never simulate it perfectly). I was not feeding live to get off on watching a rodent die, I kill them myself all the time so it's no thrill to watch a snake do it. What I was trying to do is increase the animal's quality of life. I still think this is something we should try to do but after being shown proof of the risks of live feeding, the things that probably won't but just might happen during one of the thousands of feedings you will have to do, I have decided that the risks aren't worth the potential benefits in this case. To compensate for the snake not taking the prey down itself you can put a stunned rodent into the enclosure, it will still twitch and move around but won't be able to defend itself. If you're snake isn't an ambush hunter by nature, like a BCI, you can hide the p/k or f/t prey in the enclosure and let the snake track it down. I believe those ideas provide some balance between safety and stimulation.