kamikaziechameleon;5064728; said:
A feeder box is not a bad idea for a regularly handled animal. All my herp friends used them on larger animals. It gets the animal conditioned to not expect food to come into the tank so they don't strike at you.
And so does hook training, which is MUCH, MUCH easier. I've been dealing with Retics for years and it's easy to say, that they have had the worst rep for being aggressive.
I have a 14' female that will catch a 10lb rabbit, in mid air, when she knows she's getting fed. That sliding door comes open and she just anticipates it. As soon as you touch her, with a snake hook and the immediately snaps out of feed mode...which 99% of all hook trained snakes do.
Now, the main problem I have with feed boxes is this...say you remove a 10' - 15' long snake and feed. How long are you going to leave that snake in the seperate feed box (which, most of the time does not have the same environmental conditions as their enclosure)? You don't want to leave that snake in an open air environment for too long. So, you go back the next day and try to transport the snake back to it's enclosure. You're adding alot of unnecessary stress to that animal. Then you add in a belly full of food and you're just asking for a regurgitation. On top of that, you couldn't pay me to move a retic, who was still in feed mode along with a full belly, back to its enclosure.
This is not just true with my large Retics...it even goes for yearlings and subadults.
I know numerous guys, who have 100+ Retics , down to guys like me who have aprox 20 and hook training works for every single one of them, on the majority of their collections (you always have those pain in the ass snakes). The debate will continue for years, but no one will ever convince me that feed boxes are a better idea than hook training.
