Hi all,

I've been working with ball pythons for about 7 years now. While I'm familiar with ball python behavior and care, this is my first time with a hatchling from a breeder (the rest have not been my own animals, or have been rescues; I've worked with hatchlings at a nature center briefly, but the clutch didn't make it) and I'm running into some issues. I bought my female pastel Mojave from a breeder unfed/unshed at a week old earlier this year, hatch date approx. May 31. She had yet to take a meal five weeks after she'd hatched, and with my previous experience working with a clutch that died before their first successful meal, I panicked. After trying live food, ASFs (both f/t and alive), scenting, and so on, I assist fed her (when I probably should have waited it out) and she was not happy about it. Before this, she was very docile and had no problem with being handled.

Now, it's been almost three months of her acting extremely aggressively because she's still so scared of me after the feeding. It's to the point where she strikes at me whenever I even pass by the glass to her terrarium and I have to put on bite-proof gloves to change her water, keep humidity up, and so on because otherwise she strikes - and keeps striking - even after I've left the room. I worry she'll injure herself in the process because she basically launches herself at me/the glass. I've tried a few different methods of getting her to calm down, like not handling her until she gets settled, handling her often and "cupping" her when she strikes, and the like, but I haven't had any success so far. Temps and humidity are right, she has a lot of hiding places, she's eating f/t weekly just fine, and she's currently in a 70 gallon Vision cage with solid sides. I've never had a problem with this kind of aggression, she doesn't even hiss or coil before striking; she's always tense and S-shaping, but no warnings apart from that. I'm curious to see if anyone else has had this problem or something similar happen, and if so, how they went about correcting this behavior. Specifically, I'm wondering about what I can be doing differently right now, if it's too late to fix my error, and what the time frame might be for getting her accustomed to handling again. Thanks in advance.