Try the technique that I do. If you see that head poking out of the hide and its in the evening of a feeding day, see if you can entice your snake out of their hide to grab a bite to eat. I dangle the rat outside the hide and pull back slowly. Many times he coils around it before I even know what happened. In fact if he is out and climbing around he rarely strikes if I offer food and have to lay it over a hide so he can slowly come and smother it to death. It might not be an instant success but mine took to this method pretty quickly and has, after years, come to expect his feed that way.
I would never recommend removing hides to get a ball to eat, that might increase stress (you are essentially a big monster digging up their burrow) and it teaches negative reinforcement. It would be similar to force-handling instead of trust training. I have actually started over the past months to avoid hide lifting while my snake is in it unless absolutely necessary and it has been doing wonders for his stress levels.
Edit: I also never handle my snake the day of feeding it just is an unnecessary thing to do in my mind.
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