As a new snake owner, I was open to the advice that any experienced snake handlers could give me. One such piece of advice, however, I learned was not necessarily a practical practice. This was regarding the subject of feeding boxes.
The general theory behind feeding boxes is that a person would feed their snake inside the feeding box instead of in its cage so as the snake would not associate the cage opening with food and attack its owner by mistake. It made sense enough to me, so I gave it a try.
Unfortunately, the feeding box method proved to present me with two new challenges - aggressive or odd behavior inside the feeding boxes and that it was highly discouraged to "handle" a snake after it had eaten (especially boa constrictors because it could cause them to regurgitate their meal) and there was no way to get the snake back from the feeding box and into its enclosure without handling it.
Now, I had been using the "feeding box" method with Shiva for a good three months before Quetzalcoatl came to live with me. For Shiva, I took the lid of an old paper box and sat her inside and fed her there. It worked fine for a while but over time several issues began to arise.
One of these issues was that it was as if Shiva wanted me to assist her in eating. She had taken her rats back or butt first a couple of times (makes swallowing very very difficult) and after that, she would bite and constrict her food, and then drop it and look back and forth between me and the rat until I pointed to the nose of the rat. As soon as I had pointed to the nose of the rat she would dart her head over and take it down head first. After a few weeks of this odd behavior, she would take the head of the rat in her mouth, slither over to me and press it against my leg to help her swallow faster by allowing her to take bigger bites.
This behavior struck me as very very odd, and very unnatural, so I would dangle her rats until she bit and constricted and then I would leave the kitchen (I always fed her on the kitchen floor). That was when Shiva began to bite, constrict, and then drag the rat into the living room. All of this became such a headache to me, I finally just started giving her food inside her enclosure. Generally, I would just get her attention with the rat and then lay it down (on a paper towel so as to keep substrate off of it) inside the cage and she just ate off the floor of the cage with no problems. All other problems with feeding her ceased instantly. Yay for feeding inside the cage!
The general theory behind feeding boxes is that a person would feed their snake inside the feeding box instead of in its cage so as the snake would not associate the cage opening with food and attack its owner by mistake. It made sense enough to me, so I gave it a try.
Unfortunately, the feeding box method proved to present me with two new challenges - aggressive or odd behavior inside the feeding boxes and that it was highly discouraged to "handle" a snake after it had eaten (especially boa constrictors because it could cause them to regurgitate their meal) and there was no way to get the snake back from the feeding box and into its enclosure without handling it.
Now, I had been using the "feeding box" method with Shiva for a good three months before Quetzalcoatl came to live with me. For Shiva, I took the lid of an old paper box and sat her inside and fed her there. It worked fine for a while but over time several issues began to arise.
One of these issues was that it was as if Shiva wanted me to assist her in eating. She had taken her rats back or butt first a couple of times (makes swallowing very very difficult) and after that, she would bite and constrict her food, and then drop it and look back and forth between me and the rat until I pointed to the nose of the rat. As soon as I had pointed to the nose of the rat she would dart her head over and take it down head first. After a few weeks of this odd behavior, she would take the head of the rat in her mouth, slither over to me and press it against my leg to help her swallow faster by allowing her to take bigger bites.
This behavior struck me as very very odd, and very unnatural, so I would dangle her rats until she bit and constricted and then I would leave the kitchen (I always fed her on the kitchen floor). That was when Shiva began to bite, constrict, and then drag the rat into the living room. All of this became such a headache to me, I finally just started giving her food inside her enclosure. Generally, I would just get her attention with the rat and then lay it down (on a paper towel so as to keep substrate off of it) inside the cage and she just ate off the floor of the cage with no problems. All other problems with feeding her ceased instantly. Yay for feeding inside the cage!
In Quetzalcoatl's case, I used Shiva's traveling box (a Sterillite tub with a handle for carrying in the top) as his feeding box. Everything went generally smoothe with him for a while. I would drop him in, close the lid, and the instant that lid opened up again he was in feeding response and would viciously and violently strike his food (hissing madly as he did) and then I would close the lid again and wait for him to swallow.
The problem I had then, however, was that he was still in feeding mode when I would open the lid again to get him out. I had to tap him on the head with a long spoon to get him out of feeding mode before I could pick him up and put him back in his feeding box. Because of this, around the same time I stopped using the feeding box for Shiva, I stopped using it for Quetzalcoatl as well.
The result of discontinuing the use of feeding boxes is that neither of my snakes were cage or food agressive (as I had been told they would be if I fed them in the cages), I finally had the peace of mind that I didn't have to handle them after meals, and they both ate off the floor of their cages consistantly. In fact, neither snake has shown more than an occasional, once every three or so month, agressive feeding response since the switch to feeding inside the cages. However, I do take my snakes out to slither around, to have their cages cleaned, etc. Therefore, they don't associate the cage opening with food.
(Videos: Quetzalcoatl in the feed box)
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