Aggression like Whoa!

[Jay_Bunny]

I posted earlier about my snakes suddenly becoming more aggressive and having a huge feeding response with f/t feeders. Last night I fed everyone and got bit once and had a few that almost got me. Thriller, my pastel got me when I dropped the mouse by accident and went to get it with the tongs. He got me right on my fingers. Little drop of blood. I move onto the other snakes and get to Ross, my male normal. He is my rescue and for a while I was thinking of trying to adopt him out, but decided to keep him. I had an issue with him last week so I opened the tub just enough to slip the mouse in and do the "mouse zombie dance". He comes flying out of the tub and lunges at my belly. I don't warm the mice to body temp since the snakes seem to take them fine at room temp and maybe that is why they are going for my hands, but jeeze. Nearly 1/2 of my snakes tried to strike me at some point last night. Should I start warming the feeders?

[Dalishar]

I'd say so! I had a couple of near-misses with my pin for about ~4 feedings, since my thumb was warmer than the rat. Ever since I started warming them up, though, he locks right onto it's head and doesn't even give my fingers glance.

Takes a little longer, but I think it's worth no bites.

[Moofins07]

Guh. Maybe that's why I always had issues when trying to turn my BP into a F/T lover. I mean, I thawed them in warm water in a plastic bag, but they never got WARM-warm. Guess that's why 'he' totally ignored 'em each time.

[omnibus2]

Wow scary, how big are they? Are they tame after you pick them up and handle them?

Just try to use long tongs to drop in the mouse, hopefully they won't be able to reach you.

[BullsBPs]

I would say try longer tongs too.

[bad-one]

I'm seeing the same thing with my normal male, he is excited whenever I'm feeding and comes right up to the front of the tub... right on level with my face lol

He is so bad now that when I open up the cage below him, even if I'm not feeding he gets active and moves up to the front of the tub and watches me...

I just drop food in and wait for him to figure it out, so far it works very well.

[cinderbird]

i ONLY feed my snakes with 18 inch hemostats. Ive never been bitten due to a mistaken feeding response.

I warm my feeders with a hair dryer

[Jay_Bunny]

I think my tongs are shorter than yours. Guess I'm going to have to get longer ones and start warming the feeders. Since I don't own a hair dryer would setting up a heat lamp and just laying them under the heat work?

[BullsBPs]

I'll copy and paste how I warm mine up from another post I made on a different thread...

I buy my F/T in bulk, and seperate them into sandwich baggies for my feedings. So I have one Zip Lock bag for each feeding basically. I leave the bag out to thaw, and once thawed I then fill my sink with extremely hot tap water (not boiled water just from the tap). Then I put the Zip Lock in the water. The Zip Lock keeps them dry. While feeding I keep this water very hot. When I present the F/T it is extremely warm temperature wise, and the feeding response is incredible. I hope this helps the temperature was the key for my picky eaters especially the spider who was only eating live.

All but one I feed in a seperate container, and I actually have two tubs going to speed up the process. I clean the tubs every so often, but they seem to keep the rodent scent anyway (my wife hates the smell). Now when we put them in the tub they get super aggressive lol. They know it's dinner time.

Hope this helps.

[WingedWolfPsion]

I think the period right before autumn should be called the 'Feeding Season'--it comes just before the breeding season...lol

All of mine are ravenous right now, too.