How do you feed Your Ball Python?

[Andrew00]

Just curious...because I have heard that if you feed your snake in only one tank, then it will associate eating with every time you open the cage, or something like that, and then it will end up biting your hand.

[sk8er4life]

i used to feed my girl in her tank but i dont have the repticarpet for my new tank so i just feed her in my old tank because that is the one with the repticarpet not the reptibark

[Brandon.O]

because I have heard that if you feed your snake in only one tank, then it will associate eating with every time you open the cage, or something like that, and then it will end up biting your hand.

I dont think thats true,lately ive been feeding everyone in thier tanks and everything is just fine.

I think thats just for people who never handle thier snakes and they only open it for feeding.
But if you are handling daily (exept for after feeding) then you should be fine

[DrEwTiMe]

oh i herd the same thing you did about snakes assiciating the opening of the cage to eating. Even if its not true i still like to take that precaution so there is absolutly no way that she can mistake me opening the cage to mean food time hehe. i have a completly seperate box that she gets fed in.

[AngelOfDeath]

Yea, ditto i feed my ball in a seperate tank ( tubberware) just in case there could be a possiblity of him associating me opening the tank with dinner time

[Andrew00]

Has anyone actually had the expirience of having trouble handling their snake becasue they only kept it in one cage? Well, I suppose it would be hard to know for sure if that was the reason your snake was striking at you anyway.

[OreoGaborio]

.. who was it that said they had a routine of knocking on the tank 3 times, taking it out w/ a snake hook as opposed to hands, & placing it in a different tank for feeding? whoever it was, they said it worked awesome

[lucky8926]

I lay newspaper down before I feed *in the tank* so maybe he will get used to knowing that that means feeding time.

[gncz73]

if you have one or two snakes takeing them out and feeding is ok but when you have few snakes taking them all out and feeding is alot of work that is not needed them only time i take them out to feed is when i check there weight.

[Cody]

Seems theres so many topics like this, lol.

As I've probably said before, if you ask me, that hand in cage = food rumor is just that...a rumor. Maybe if you left your snake in its cage all the time, and just went in the cage to feed it, then maybe that could happen. But any good keeper will tell you that you have to go in the cage atleast a few times a week for spot cleaning and water changing, so why would the snake associate your hand in the cage as food if you go in the tank for other reasons also? If anything, the snake would associate you in the tank to the spot cleaning and stuff since that's what you're in their for most. You usually only feed once a week. You should spot clean atleast once every few days. So yeah....the rumor doesn't make sense to me.
IMO, unless you have a loose substrate and you're afraid of the snake ingesting it, there's no reason to feed outside of the cage. Even if you do have loose substrate, just do what I do and lay a sheet of newspaper down over the substrate for feeding.