Better way to feed in BP enclosure?

I've had my BP for two weeks and fed him in his enclosure for the second time today. He took the mouse right away but a few things ended up being less than optimal:

- The mouse I thawed somehow got a raging nosebleed

- My BP grabbed the mouse in the middle of the body instead of the head, and then tried to eat it rear-end first for about 20 minutes, which meant dragging the bloody mouse all over himself and the enclosure and getting cypress mulch stuck on it

- BP finally got the mouse facing the right way but ate some small pieces of cypress stuck to it

So overall it was pretty gross, now the floor of the enclosure needs to be cleaned, and I'm worried that my BP might get a splinter stuck in his mouth or an impaction from eating bits of cypress. Wondering if there's a better way to do this next time, and if there are any ways to:

a) Prevent frozen/thawed mouse nosebleeds
b) Prevent BP from grabbing the wrong end of the mouse
c) Prevent ingestion of substrate when feeding inside the enclosure

I thaw slowly in the snake room to get them interested ... feed evenings .

I put pieces of card down over the floor and feed over that ..

Now mine all strike from within their hides so I wait until they're settled in their hide ...then when it's thawed I give them a good blast with a hair dryer then offer INSTANTLY ,I hold them by their tail and dangle in front of the hide .. do it fast whilst it's still warm from the hairdryer


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a) F/t prey bleeding from the nose sometimes is normal unfortunately. I think it can be made worse if the mouse is thawed in too high temps, but overall it happens every few rodents.

b) The best you can do is heat the head more than the body when you offer and hope he has better accuracy. But all of my snakes still grab the prey by the mid-section sometimes and have to figure their way around to the head, even as adults and doing the same thing for years. LOL

c) You can put something like the lid of a tub on the substrate and offer on top of it. But honestly, it's normal and okay for them to ingest some substrate when eating, and cypress mulch is a safe substrate.

A. Most of my f/t prey have nose bleeds. It is really not an issue if you dry your prey on a napkin for a few min. The blood dries up fast when you blow the dryer on its face which only helps getting your bp even more interested in its food.

B. Common way of eating by babies. Try your best to offer it head first but all of my baby snakes including the bp would mistakenly strike at the mid section or the butt. Overtime, they learn to strike the face. My woma still strike anywhere he wants but then again womas don't really care how he gets his food in, lol. I would not worry too much as they can figure things out on their own.

C. Try to 'give' your snake the prey after the strike by putting it inside its hide, assuming it strikes from its hide like most bp do. I use aspen and find it annoying sometimes too. Almost all except my CP would wait inside their hides for food on feeding day. Offer the prey, it strikes and wraps around it, then gently lift up the hide and move the prey inside the hide for it to finish eating. There should be no substrate or very little substrate inside the hide (Some snakes like to push the substrate out of its hide when resting).

I agree with the others about nose bleed, and do believe it’s worse depending on how you go about defrosting it. I prefer slowly over a couple of hours, then blasting with a hair dryer right before offering. I wouldn’t worry about a little ingested substrate, should be fine. Welcome to snake keeping, eventually if you’re really lucky you’ll get a mouse that explodes during constricting. Now that’s a real fine how do you do! Again probably a result of heating to quickly. ;)

Thanks for the tips everyone! I was trying to heat up the mouse faster than I did last time so I'll slow it down in the future. I used a hair dryer with my first feeding but wanted to see if I could just get the mouse warm enough from the water this time so maybe I made the temp a tad too high.

Feeding on cardboard or a lid sounds like a good idea, I'll try that. Glad to hear a little bit of substrate ingested is okay as well, I read a few scary articles about snakes getting impacted from eating their substrate.

BPs can be such derps with their striking sometimes! Hope they improve at least a little over time haha.

How do you get your snakes to strike from their hides? Maybe I just didn't give mine enough time but I can't seem to get a response from him by waving the mouse in front of his hide. If I lift the hide and put the mouse up to his face he'll strike in about 30 seconds.

Quote:

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Welcome to snake keeping, eventually if you’re really lucky you’ll get a mouse that explodes during constricting. Now that’s a real fine how do you do! Again probably a result of heating to quickly.

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WHAT. Explode?? Like food in a microwave?? Hope I won't need to witness (and clean up) this kind of spectacle any time soon :weirdface