Quote Originally Posted by BCS View Post
Most of my female BPs (except one) have super strong feeding responses but they know what food looks like. Like I said, I have two that feed live and even they do not confuse me for a rat/mouse/ASF. Opening a cage for some does not mean feeding time. However, for my BCI male, he is ready for food the second I open his cage but he knows there is no food if reach in and touch him. He has also never mistaken me for food.
The problem isn't necessarily the transferring them from the cage to the feeding bin. The problem is transferring the snake who just ate in the feeding tub and is still in feed mode back into the cage. That is where the problems most of the time occur. All of my snakes are fine when I open the cages and I reach in and do whatever and even pet them on the head and go straight for them head first and they are fine. Now if they smell a rat, that is a whole new game and all 3 of my snakes become death machines who coil up, trace any movement and slam the rats the second they are in the cage. All the bites I have suffered from my snakes minus one were from feeding accidents and 3/4 of those were from feeding tubs. now as I posted above, this isn't really a problem with something smaller like a BP but for something big, it can end in a very ugly bite or even worse, you getting constricted although to be honest, every time I was tagged with them in a feeding tub, they let go once they tasted I wasn't a rat but again, this was from a BCI, not something like a burm, retic or anaconda. I just don't see any upside to feeding outside the cage for something like a F/T or pre kill. A live rodent, I can see an upside as you don't want a rodent wrecking havoc in the cage but that is the only circumstance I could possibly see an upside to a feeding tub. Bottom line is even the most docile trustworthy snake can turn when it smells food and do you really want to play roulette with a big constrictor? I know this is the BP section of the forums but this advice is applied to all snakes and even more so to big ones.