Let's start with feeding, because they are smaller snake the prey item fed to an adult with range from small adult to jumbo mice, while you could feed a rats that size, I do not recommend it as a main staple as rats that young are fatter and their bones are not as calcified. I usually offer rats for 3/4 feedings after brumation, and for 3/4 feedings after effects laying. Fatty liver disease can be a concern.
There is NO way to feed a weanling rat to a hognose, way too big at the most you can feed a pup to a large female and I mean LARGE.
Now when it come to feeding some have a wild feeding response but so long you are holding the prey with some hemostats there will not be any issue. I never tap the enclosure when it's time for food they know and if I open the enclosure on any other day they don't think it's for food either.
Hognose are venemous snake, they are rear fanging animals with a very mild venom. Now the good news is that hognose very rarely bite and if they do it is a feeding bite. A quick tag and release bite would not likely cause a reaction, now a feeding bite if they get to chew on you for a while can cause a reaction such as swelling at the bite site, your hand and part of your arm (different people different reaction), not something that can damage you or make anyone get out of it because of it.
I am a bite magnet and this is the one species that has never bit me in the past 5 years of raising and breeding them, so again not in their demeanor.
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