So here's a question: How many of you feed frozen/thawed and how many feed live prey?
I ask because not many people stop to consider the difference, and just feed live prey for the thrill.
However, feeding live prey creates many dangers/issues, including the danger of transferring an intestinal parasite from the prey item to your snake, and the chance of the prey item injuring your snake.
With the parasite you have to consider this. It is alive inside the rat's stomach so, when you put the rat inside the snake, and the snake digests the rat, guess what's left?
I've seen a number of snakes with missing eyes, gouged faces, and chunks bitten out of their bodies. One even sustained a bite to the spine that left it paralyzed and it had to be euthanized...all because they owners fed live and weren't paying attention.
Regardless of what many will tell you 99% of captive snakes will eat f/t (frozen/thawed) prey. With pythons you may have to warm it under a lamp (they have heat sensing pits). For the rest you can usually just thaw to room temperature and serve. With some you may need to tease feed them or do what I call "mouse puppets" where you use long tongs and sort of run the little rodent corpse around and make it appear alive.
While the feeding part is a bit more involved, the trade off is that you don't have to make a special trip out for a feeder. You can simply keep a bunch of them in the freezer. We used to order them online and they would come direct to our house packed in dry ice.