1. I don't want the snake to always think when my hand comes in thats its dinner time. Won't happen unless you make a SFE and your hand smells and wiggles like a rat.

2. I thought I read somewhere that, since I have aspen as subsrate for him that it could get on the rat and he/she shouldn't swallow it? Snakes have been eating food to a while now that wasn't in a clean steril tub. They can do just fine with a little debris.

3. Also I figured giving him a feeding bin makes his enclosure less messy. Shouldn't be that messy either way.

We did some of the same things you are doing now. After listening to those with more experience we changed to in tank feeding and have not had any additional mess, stress on the snake, bites, or lack of feeding response.