Do you feed in tank?

[luvmyballs]

when I originally posted this I had a lot of the same questions to. reading your posts makes me a little leary. everybody says there is no such thing as cage aggression but they're certainly seems to be something going on with yours. I'm not a huge breeder either I just want to make sure my kids will be safe if they get into the tanks. I will be curious to see some of the responses. I am still on the fence about this .

[WingedWolfPsion]

*shrugs*
A) A small hook doesn't cost any more than a separate tank.
B) Most ball pythons are fine unless it's near feeding day, regardless.
C) Some snakes will launch at you for food when they're hungry, no matter where you feed them.
D) A fairly large number of ball pythons either feed poorly (skipping meals), or won't feed at all, if put into a separate cage to do so.

All that in mind, my opinion is still--it's best to feed ball pythons in their own cage, where they are comfortable, as this is more important than our comfort, and doesn't pose much of an inconvenience, even if the snake does develop cage aggression. If you have a ball python, and feed it in a separate cage, and it eats every time when it's not in shed, then great...by all means, continue to do so. However, if you feed in a separate cage, and your ball python is a picky eater, it's time to think about changing things.

[MrLang]

Thanks for the input all. Not sure how I'll proceed from here but I'm glad that new owners may read and consider this part of the issue in deciding for themselves.

Like I said, I was really surprised that nobody spoke about this elsewhere in the thread. Forgive me if I missed it. As a newbie snake owner who bought them to handle and not to watch them kill things, this is a big deal to me. If others come across this and feel the same, if you can get them to eat out of their cage and it doesn't seem to freak them out too much - my advise is to do it. It's my 1 cent observation that there IS a difference in behavior when you feed in and out of the cage. I definitely wouldn't label it 'aggression,' but that doesn't mean I'm trying to go Steve Irwin on my pet just to hold it.

Oh, and I weighed my snakes after the comment about meal size. Apparently they both grew over 50 grams in the last 3 weeks, outgrowing the bag of 50 adult mice I just recently bought for them. Awesome... good thing there's another expo in a month to buy rats