Weird feeding and temp question.

Hey everyone, I just picked up my first BP the other day (yay) and was told she was a garbage disposal when it comes to food, anything from live to frozen. That being said I was still nervous with the whole house swap and move that she wouldn't eat. Boy was I wrong, she took about 5 seconds to see what I was giving her and then snatched it right up. The weird part was after she was done "killing" the thawed mouse. She began to arch up and had almost her entire body in the air, easily over half of her body was in a straight line pointing up with the weight of the food being the only thing keeping her head down. If I'm explaining this poorly she looked like an upside down "J". I cant find anything like this on the web and I was just wondering if this is normal behavior. (She's about 2 months old.)

Another thing is her heat source, I'm currently using a ZooMed heat pad with a temp regulator set to 100F. Now let me explain, I also bought a IR temp gauge and after multiple setting changes got the bottom of her cage to be anywhere from 85-95F. Again, before you tell me it's too hot when I put my hand on the bottom it's only very slightly warm. She doesn't seem bothered by it and moves around her cage when the lights are off bouncing from cold spot to hot spot (most of the time in the hot spot). so my question is should I lower it and risk her getting cold in this super A/Ced house or keep it where it is.

For the heat, don't trust your hand, it is 98.6 degrees, temps needed will actually feel cooler, so you will not be able to effectively regulate temps for your snake. Use your temp gun often to check.

Set your thermostat to whatever it takes to get a hot side of 90. Your cool side should be around 78-80.

As far as after eating; these guys can really contort sometimes into some goofy positions to get their food down. There is nothing to worry about.


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I get as their swallowing they use gravity to push it down, but this gal hadn't even started swallowing before she starting lifting up. I couldn't stop laughing and when I ended up pulling out my phone she had half of it down by then. It was just so bizarre, she almost toppled over backwards a few times too.
I got her hot side of the cage to anywhere between 87-96 didn't see anything out of that range. Probably an easy question but what would happen if it's too hot? I get that if it's too cold she wont be able to digest and all sorts of things will go wrong but extra heat without burning doesn't seem like it would hurt her. If I'm totally wrong plz correct me.

95 may be a little too hot. Make sure you are taking the temp of the bottom of the tank and not the top of the substrate. It seems like a little thing but it can get too hot at the bottom of the tank where their body often touches due to burrowing and even the action of curling up into a ball inside their hide.

Good for you on having a thermostat and IR gun. As for weird contortions, many times I thought I would have to hold my Monty while he is standing so tall. He also dropped his jumbo F/T mouse into the water dish. He wouldn't grab it from the water, it cooled off too much. I didn't know a snake could give me the evil eye when I took it out.