Feeding: inside vs outside the tank

Could I address ALL who feed their snakes outside of their tubs/enclosures?

I have never once been bit by my ball python, when feeding in his vivarium, I feed him with tongs. He has never once shown any sign of aggression towards me when I enter the vivarium, after a year of being fed in the enclosure by tong. When food is present, he strikes at that, nothing else.

A way to put this into a question that you can relate to would be; How would you like it if the police stormed into your house, grabbed you from your bed, and took you to this brand new, never seen, mysterious place where you have nowhere to go because every few feet there's a wall?

Cage aggression from feeding inside the enclosure is a complete myth... The fact that you open his enclosure many more times in comparison to clean his cage, sometimes to take him out, sometimes to refill water, etc. is evidence enough that he won't associate "opening the tub" to food at all.

You can take a gander at this article for all the details on why feeding outside the cage is not beneficial at all, but only potential harm/risk: http://www.arbreptiles.com/lastword/snakefeeding.shtml

Also, it's a good idea to get a scale... like someone said, so you can keep close track this time whether your snake is losing or gaining weight. Especially in the first 4 months of a baby ball python, they should be gaining weight pretty fast.

Just to give you an idea, my albino male BP is 6 months old right now and weighs ~430g. He's been eating an appropriate-sized meal once a week. Hatchling ball pythons right out of the egg are usually around 50g~90g.

When I first started keeping snakes I did the move to feeding containers thing.
We all know very little in the beginning but that is what the forum is here for.
With about 40 snakes and 51 hatchlings I couldn't imagine keeping that kind of craziness.....

i think the idea is that the snake would snap when its near its feeding day, since it's hungry and knows food will be arriving soon... a guy talking about REALLY big snakes (retics and stuff) mentioned that he used a snake hook to avoid that issue, since a snake that big taking a snap at you could be risky, and myth or not it's probably a situation you'd want to avoid. obviously if you have 10+ snakes it's a bit impractical, but this still doesn't address the choking on substrate issue. if you've only got a few snakes and they're on indigestable substrate, and they're not of a species that's extremely shy or prefers to hunt in a particular way, then tub feeding is probably fine, just to avoid potentially dangerous blockages. if you've got a snake on newspaper/paper towels that there's no way it could end up in the snake's mouth, or you have a bunch of snakes and it'd be rediculous to feed them all in tubs, then there isn't really a reason TO tub feed. it seems like a matter of circumstance, hence why i pointed out the merits of both.

I believed the myth of feeding inside the cage up until I started 3 months ago and still no bites!

I've had good luck with feeding inside exxelt for these darn vermin grabbing on to parts of the decor.

If you're feeding F/T, there's absolutely no point in feeding in a separate container.

With that said, I feed live and ONLY feed in a separate container. I will never feed inside their terrarium. Not only is it dangerous if the snake doesn't kill the prey right away, it's very unsanitary because rats and mice pee and defecate on everything.

I feed 5 snakes weekly and don't have a problem with "stress" or them ever biting me (or even trying for that matter). They are actually conditioned to "know" that once they're in a separate container they will be fed.

People make feeding in separate containers sounds like bad practice but it's really not. Everyone has their way of doing thing. Just have to figure out what works for you.

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Originally Posted by Mr. Misha

If you're feeding F/T, there's absolutely no point in feeding in a separate container.

With that said, I feed live and ONLY feed in a separate container. I will never feed inside their terrarium. Not only is it dangerous if the snake doesn't kill the prey right away, it's very unsanitary because rats and mice pee and defecate on everything.

I feed 5 snakes weekly and don't have a problem with "stress" or them ever biting me (or even trying for that matter). They are actually conditioned to "know" that once they're in a separate container they will be fed.

People make feeding in separate containers sounds like bad practice but it's really not. Everyone has their way of doing thing. Just have to figure out what works for you.

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I have to say I agree with this. I too feed live so the tub makes more sense to me in that particular case since I can't control where the live mouse goes and they are disgusting creatures as far as their rodent bodily habits go.