Feeding inside enclosure Vs. in a separate enclosure. (questions)

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Originally Posted by snakesRkewl

The point I am getting at is they get bigger and have big appetites, especially females :)

I find that picking up my snakes will throw them off feed for the time being, after all they think I'm taking them out to play, not to eat
It's all in how you program them, feeding in or out of the enclosure is a personal decision and as long as the snake eats and stays healthy then it doesn't matter which you do.

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Well I guess we have already 'programmed' Snickers to eat out of her enclosure at this point so we will stick to it but your posts are making me hope Snickers is actually a male!

Are females that much more aggressive than males?

I have a female pastel that is a little B*%^ some times. Like when i wake her up out of a cold stone nap she will hisss at me :snake:. (this has only happened twice!) OBVIOUSLY she would be mad at this :D. Shes pretty docile and loves to hang out with me daily!

This is my schedule:
1) Handle her aggressively for 30 minutes a day. (By aggressively i mean classically conditioning her waving my hands fast or slow to let her know I'm around to see if i can get a reaction out of her. This was my stage one tactic... she no longer fears my hands VICTORY!!! Stage 2 i know am able to pet her head and rub behind her jaws with out her thinking twice.)

2) Every five days is feeding day! OH! and she knows when its coming. I pick her up out of her enclosure and plop her in her mini pink tub she tucks her head down stretches out and gets in a nice striking posture (seeing this never gets old!). As soon as that F/T mouse dangles close to her strike range its a goner! I wait till i cannot see the mouse in her throat and allow her to go back into her enclosure.

But as SnakesRKewl brings up a good opinion based of personally experience it does make me wonder too. But i remember all snakes are different. My female could be dwarfed and not get to a 3000 gram monster (doubtful lol) but she could indeed be very passive all together! One thing though that is COMMON SENSE or should be if i have a breeder female I'm always going to assume shes aggressive! What female on this planet would not die for their babies! :D

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Originally Posted by Superpop

Are females that much more aggressive than males?

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No, not at all, only when they feeding up for breeding do they start their give me, give me, give me attitude, lol.

Brian and his staff at BHB feed THOUSANDS of snakes in their enclosures - always has. They have even done tests on food aggression and programming. And they have not had a single case of impaction from ingesting substrate.

Turns out, it is the snake, not the environment or feeding process. The snake they used as a control and fed IN the bin was calmer than the one they took out to feed.

In other words, do what you want. But don't have a reason other than it is what YOU prefer.
:D

I feed in cardboard boxes because some of my snakes are DUMB-DUMBS and really will start launching themselves at me every time I open the tank if I feed in the enclosure. And I really don't wait very long at all to move them back at the end of the meal---I make sure the mouse is all the way down and there's not a bulge in their neck. But once they've swallowed, I pretty much just grab them by the tail and put them back. (I do find grabbing them by the back end works pretty well--I think the advice to hold them directly under the bulge actually makes them a bit uncomfortable.)

But either way, I've never had one regurge from transporting them back to the tank after a meal. I HAVE had them regurge because somebody kicked the cord to the UTH and the temps went way down overnight, and then way up in the morning when I plugged it back it.

I actually use newsprint paper as a substrate. So I'm not as worried about them accidentally swallowing it as I would be with paper towels. I'm not sure I'd worry about aspen chips? Sometimes the mice come with aspen attached anyway. I try to clean them off, but sometimes I miss some.