You bring up a good point. Some care sheets will tell you to feed in a separate enclosure and then tell you not to handle the snake for a few days. Are we supposed to keep two complete setups - one for feeding & one for keeping? No.



If a snake is kept on it's natural type of substrate, or newspaper, paper towels, etc..., I say to feed in the snake's normal cage. I mean, after all, they eat rodents in the dirt their entire lifetime in the wild.



I have kept & fed various snakes & lizards on sand, dirt, aspen bedding, pine shavings, cypress mulch and maybe a few others for many years and have never had the first problem with impaction or any ingestion issues.



The only exception to that would be the crushed walnut shells & calcium sand (bad news). I don't know of a single reptile that naturally lives on either one of those two substrates. They should not be used.



Contrary to popular belief, feeding a snake in it's normal cage does not lead to feeding response strikes every time the cage is opened as long as you open the cage more often than just to feed them. I've got snakes that I feed by hand, although I don't necessarily encourage it - I generally suggest feeding with tongs, and I don't get feeding responses when I reach in to get them out or when I open their cage.



Here's a routine that works well - Come feeding time, make sure you don't have any prey scent on your hands. Take you snake out & handle it for several minutes and lay its prey on the cage floor before you put the snake back in. Put the snake back in the cage and it should find the prey & eat. Wait a day or two before routine handling.



I started using this technique with a hatchling pair of Burmese pythons over 4yrs ago and I've never had a single issue. One is 12ft long & the other is 10ft long now, still using the same routine.



By feeding in a separate enclosure you run the risk of upsetting a nervous snake, causing it to regurgitate it's meal, by having to handle it, no matter how gently, to put it back in it's normal cage. This is actually few & far between, but t happens.



Another downside to feeding in a separate enclosure has already been mentioned - the snake can still be in feeding mode and can be quite feisty when you try to put it back in its cage.



A healthy reptile can digest wood shavings/chips, dirt, sand, that it consumes while eating. Seen it done many times.



If a person feels their substrate could be dangerous to their snake if ingested, then they shouldn't be using that substrate. Period.



Some people confuse a snake's defensic=ve behavior while in its cage as being a feeding repsonse. They are two different things. A snake's cage is its territory and sometimes it can feel threatened & stike. Doesn't mean that it's thinking, "Food!"



I'm not bashing anyone else's views, I just respectfully disagree with some view.



Best wishes!

HH
-----
Due to political correctness run amuck,

this ol' hillbilly is now referred to as an:

Appalachian American





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