In reply to Kim's post:

I am not knowledgable about the topic of feeding live prey to
mammals/pets. I am enjoying hearing from everyone and I'm learning a
lot. I don't know if it is a misconception that ferrets would become
more aggressive in any sort of fashion or not. It seems to me, if it
wasn't goint to, there would be no effect at all. Meaning, I cant' see
how it would make them more peaceful. But as I said, I"m learning!

Kim and Beth both had very good points. I so agree that there would be
stress relief with live feeding and it would be natural and stimuating.
But I don't agree that kibble fed babies would be more prone to biting
for any reason. There are so few naturally fed ferrets in this nation
as compared to kibble fed, there is no way you could get any sort of
reliable pool to look at those stats to see if they bite more or less.
Not in any way, shape or form. There are millions of ferrets, and you
can barely count how many are reported to authorities for biting,
which would result in a crazy ratio of a hundreds of thousands or more
ferrets who don't bite to one that does. There are not even thousands
of naturally fed ferrets to find that "one" that might. Shelter
operators are not going to see if live fed babies bite more or not,
because those that feed live prey are the exceptional owner that would
never give up their ferret to a shelter. Plus each shelter only sees a
few hundred ferrets a year ... poor numbers to try and form any
conclusion.

The rest of Kims, and Beths points are interesting. Some I can see
holes in their conclusions, but many not! :)

I mostly came on here to comment, not because of ferrets, I must
confess. The topic of pet snakes came up. And I could not let it go
because to do so, might put out some misinformation and ultimately
hurt a pet. It is common knowledge that snake owners are told to feed
prekilled prey. Period. The main reason being that yes, the mouse
can hurt them, take out an eye, even kill them if that leads to an
uncontrollable infection. Infection comes from the mouses mouth and
germs around our environment no matter how clean you keep it. Wild
snakes often meet demise from injury from being forced to hunt. Yes
their skin is tough, but, it bleeds quite readily! All it takes is a
scrape and they bleed. Those bood vessels are all through that armor
of theirs.

I have both a rescued wild caught snake and a captive bred snake. Oddly
the wild caught snake took to prekill nicely. But the captive bred one
went through a phase and stopped eating killed prey. Nobody could do
anything and eventually ... we had to switch to live mice. Somehow,
the wild caught guy "knew" live mice were around even though we never
showed him and he did the same thing (the captive bred is a girl she
must have told her room mate ... big mouth!) Today both are fed live
mice. There have been many times where they have been hurt by the mice
and it's nerve wracking.

In as far as aggression, that is not so cut and dry in the herp world.
People lean towards believing it does increase aggression snakes
however. And personally, I've seen it ten fold, at least in my two.
Feeding them live prey away from their enclosure at a neutral location
helped prevent any aggression towards humans a great deal, BUT they
still changed. One only a little, the other more so ... and we have to
be careful around her. They are a bit more aggressive to each other as
well. Before they knew their food wasn't going to run away or run to
the other competator. Now, they don't know that. Before sure, there was
a rare occasion both would strike a dead mouse and have a tug of war.
But with live mice, we can't feed them together ever or they will go
after each other (trying to take a mouse out of the others mouth). Even
if we put four mice a peice in the same enclosure, do you know what
they do?? Kill each one systematically in a frenzy together until all
are dead, and then start to eat them. If you feed killed mice, they
don't get all frenzied and do that. They are more relaxed. We noticed
the behavioral changes fairly soon after the change of feeding
practices.

So that's what I was here to say mostly on the herp topic. I stand
by every word I said up above and have always owned various herps,
read many books in the past, and frequented the web on the topic as a
private owner. I thought it was important to put that out there. We
don't want any snakes to mistake a small childs pink little finger for
a wiggly pinky being dropped (because feeding them live does make them
more excitable at feedings), or a snake to loose an eye.

I don't know anything about this in reference to ferrets, and I really
enjoy reading the different view points and all of the factors to
weigh. So I thank everyone for contributing! The only opinion I have on
it, is that I feel there may be an ethical issue to think about? I mean
if there is a quick human way to kill prey, rather than them having to
live through the hell they do for the ferrets sake ... then isn't it up
to us as humans to protect all animals as much as we can? Mice feel and
think just as much as ferrets. And remember mice are other peoples
"babies", just like the ferrets are ours. :)

Oh yeah ... Ferret.

Man, that is still funny as hell ...

[Posted in FML 6228]