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Bowl feeding.

B

Bowgod34

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What is it with boas, every boa I've ever owned would eat out of a food bowl like a dog or a cat. The first few that I got to do it I thought I had accomplished something, but the more boas I got the more it started seaming like second nature. Even neonates would start taking pre killed out of a bowl with in the first 6 feedings. I've always liked feeding this way because it eliminates the feeding resp:eek:onse strike,.and minimizes accidental bites. But I also find it odd that I have never been able to get other snakes to do the same. Most of my experience is with burms, and boas. Burms have never been that easy. I've always had to entice them to one degree or other.
I am just getting back into snakes after a long break, and today was my first day feeding my new addition (a 6 foot female jungle het albino) so just out of curiosity I put her meal in a bowl, and put it in her cage. I went back in a bit later, and sure enough it was gone. Kinda makes me think that this is an instinctual trait. Which would lead me to believe that they are scavengers rather than predators.
 
I've never tried a bowl, but all of my boas eat their meal right off the bottom of the tub; no enticement necessary. I only use newspaper or paper towels as substrate so I've never worried about them eating "junk" along with their food. They all get either f/t or f/k, never live, and I VERY rarely come back to find their food still sitting there. Wish that was the case with my BP collection!
 
Bowl feeding. Dave you have given me an idea. I get tired of the feeding response, especially with some of my adult females. I'm gonna give it a try this weekend.
 
Wish that was the case with my BP collection![/QUOTE]


That's the thing I find most strange. Every boa I've ever owned would eat out of a bowl,.but not once have I ever got a python to do so. I don't have much experience with balls, but my old burms always seemed to value the kill (how ever dramatized it was) almost as much as the meal. I've had burms that I would basically have to act out the whole thing with all the way down to the struggle for last breaths. If I didn't shake the rat just right he wouldn't eat it. I've even tried leaving rats in with pythons over night with no luck.

I started using the bowl more as a novelty thing, people would think I was nuts feeding "killer snakes" that way. But it just made sense to keep doing it. If anything they.associate the bowl coming into the cage with feeding time.opposed to my hand coming in the cage as feeding time.
 
The bowl is ancillary to this activity. The boa does not think of it as a bowl, nor do they care about the bowl. As Matt said, most boas will eat prey that is offered by just leaving it on the cage floor. That is essentially the same thing as you leaving it in a bowl. The reason that boas are more apt to this behavior than pythons is that, without heat pits, they are more reliant on their sense of smell than they are on sight for locating prey. They are not scavengers, but they do rely on smelling the animal they are going to ambush before they see them. That being said, I am sure that boas do scavenge if they have the opportunity, but the opportunity for scavenging animals of the size that boas eat are few and far between. Normally, smaller animals are eaten whole or at least in one sitting, meaning that there aren't any "leavings" as there often are with larger animals.

Chris
 
I mainly keep boas but have a couple burms laying around. With my boas I make them coil everytime, except for one or two who just won't do it period. I think the coiling helps them retain muscle mass, as small as it may be, I feel it still helps. Just my 2 cents.
 
jmwboas said:
I mainly keep boas but have a couple burms laying around. With my boas I make them coil everytime, except for one or two who just won't do it period. I think the coiling helps them retain muscle mass, as small as it may be, I feel it still helps. Just my 2 cents.
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I agree. I hadn't thought about this when reading about the whole bowl idea.
 
jmwboas said:
I mainly keep boas but have a couple burms laying around. With my boas I make them coil everytime, except for one or two who just won't do it period. I think the coiling helps them retain muscle mass, as small as it may be, I feel it still helps. Just my 2 cents.
Click to expand...

I've heard the same argument for feeding a stunned rat so that the snake would wrap it longer because the heart was still beating. Makes sense, but rarely do one of my boas eat before "killing" the pre-killed rodent.
 
JCCS said:
The bowl is ancillary to this activity. The boa does not think of it as a bowl, nor do they care about the bowl. As Matt said, most boas will eat prey that is offered by just leaving it on the cage floor. That is essentially the same thing as you leaving it in a bowl. The reason that boas are more apt to this behavior than pythons is that, without heat pits, they are more reliant on their sense of smell than they are on sight for locating prey. They are not scavengers, but they do rely on smelling the animal they are going to ambush before they see them. That being said, I am sure that boas do scavenge if they have the opportunity, but the opportunity for scavenging animals of the size that boas eat are few and far between. Normally, smaller animals are eaten whole or at least in one sitting, meaning that there aren't any "leavings" as there often are with larger animals.

Chris
Click to expand...


That makes sense about the heat pits.

I don't agree with making them coil because for me it defeats the propose of eliminating the feeding response. I think most will agree that the majority of bites, and human injury due to snakes is caused by feeding response. With all the politicians out there trying to put an end to our hobby already I think doing what ever we can to eliminate accidental injury is all our responsibility. Plus I don't know about all of you, but I've never enjoyed being mistaken as a rat.
 
jmwboas said:
With my boas I make them coil everytime I think the coiling helps them retain muscle mass, as small as it may be, I feel it still helps. Just my 2 cents.
Click to expand...

I agree and this is what I do as well. It's a small amount of exercise and stimulation for them (I feed f/t off tongs). Mine will all coil and 'kill' f/t quite well, if I think they are being lazy about it, I just use the tong and tug on the tail to get them to coil a bit harder.

Geting mistaken as a rat is no fun (speaking from experience) but it only happened once and it was my fault (door slipped out of my other hand and I moved that hand really fast, she responded to my movement). I hook train my snakes, so when I open the door and touch them on the head with the hook it usually knocks them out of 'feed mode' and I can go in and pull them out without issues.
 
Bowgod34 said:
That makes sense about the heat pits.

I don't agree with making them coil because for me it defeats the propose of eliminating the feeding response. I think most will agree that the majority of bites, and human injury due to snakes is caused by feeding response. With all the politicians out there trying to put an end to our hobby already I think doing what ever we can to eliminate accidental injury is all our responsibility. Plus I don't know about all of you, but I've never enjoyed being mistaken as a rat.
Click to expand...

So basically your saying that instead of educating people about the animals and their behavior, we change their bahavior. I rarely get bit, and when I do, it is my fault. Im talking on the phone or my kid or just flat out not following my routine. I feed in cage, f/t off of tongs. I try to do the same thing everytime I feed, the times I don't do the same thing I usually get bit. These animals can have a feed response, deal with it the right way and don't try to change their NATURAL behavior or don't keep them. Their feed response is one of the many things I love about boas. It is instinct, work with it, don't change it.
 
jmwboas said:
So basically your saying that instead of educating people about the animals and their behavior, we change their bahavior. I rarely get bit, and when I do, it is my fault. Im talking on the phone or my kid or just flat out not following my routine. I feed in cage, f/t off of tongs. I try to do the same thing everytime I feed, the times I don't do the same thing I usually get bit. These animals can have a feed response, deal with it the right way and don't try to change their NATURAL behavior or don't keep them. Their feed response is one of the many things I love about boas. It is instinct, work with it, don't change it.
Click to expand...

Agreed. They are an exotic, prey eating animal. It comes with the territory.
 
jmwboas said:
So basically your saying that instead of educating people about the animals and their behavior, we change their bahavior. I rarely get bit, and when I do, it is my fault. Im talking on the phone or my kid or just flat out not following my routine. I feed in cage, f/t off of tongs. I try to do the same thing everytime I feed, the times I don't do the same thing I usually get bit. These animals can have a feed response, deal with it the right way and don't try to change their NATURAL behavior or don't keep them. Their feed response is one of the many things I love about boas. It is instinct, work with it, don't change it.
Click to expand...

This isnt intended to come across as rude or anything like that. These are exotics and don't need to be politically correct like everything else in the world.
 
AbsoluteApril said:
I hook train my snakes, so when I open the door and touch them on the head with the hook it usually knocks them out of 'feed mode' and I can go in and pull them out without issues.
Click to expand...

Exactly. With my bigger boas, I go ahead and use the hook to coax them out (never yank or pull hard), and they're--usually--sweethearts once they're out of the enclosure. About the only times that I've been bitten were when I let my guard down and didn't pay enough attention to the snake.
 
To each their own I guess. I don't think it does any harm removing the instinct to kill. People train every domestic pet to not do certain things that the pet does on instinct.

There are numerous other ways to maintain, and build muscle mass with out putting your blood on the line.

We may not need to be politically correct, but with all of the states trying to pass bills to ban keeping exotic pets you might want to consider at least looking at it.
 
I feed boas off of tongs and let them strike. I've fed boas probably tens of thousands of times at this point. I have been bitten while doing this once. It was at 3 am and I was not of a sober frame of mind at the time. It was a stupid mistake on my part and not one that has been repeated. Also, feeding response is not a learned behavior, it is completely instinctual and ingrained into the boas very "being". It is not something that can be trained or bred out of them with the ease of which you are implying. I have had some animals that are too shy to strike, so conceivably it could be bred out of them for the most part in a very long term project.

However, I don't feel that boas pose a large enough threat to my physical well being to make this effort worth it. I feel that their instinctual behavior that has aided them so well thus far on their evolutionary path should be catered to, not deterred. While I am not in favor of live feeding as it has obvious health hazards to the animals, tong feeding is the best method to simulate this ambush response in captivity.

As conscious beings, modifying our own learned behavior is much simpler and more successful than trying to change the instinctual behavior of our boas. All of this comes down to this point, you are never going to be "safe" from feeding strikes, as they happen all the time, even when it's not feeding day. Don't complain about their behavior, just watch your own butt and you'll be fine, lol.
 
Bowgod34 said:
To each their own I guess. I don't think it does any harm removing the instinct to kill. People train every domestic pet to not do certain things that the pet does on instinct.

There are numerous other ways to maintain, and build muscle mass with out putting your blood on the line.

We may not need to be politically correct, but with all of the states trying to pass bills to ban keeping exotic pets you might want to consider at least looking at it.
Click to expand...

So what happens when the family dog that has never bit anyone for 8yrs decides to bite someone? IT IS INSTINCT No animal is tame, they are still a wild animal. As for the "states banning them" comment. I would never try to CHANGE my animals just so I could keep them. The way they are is why I like them so much.
 
jmwboas said:
So what happens when the family dog that has never bit anyone for 8yrs decides to bite someone? IT IS INSTINCT No animal is tame, they are still a wild animal. As for the "states banning them" comment. I would never try to CHANGE my animals just so I could keep them. The way they are is why I like them so much.
Click to expand...

Couldn't of said it any better.
 
I would tend to agree about the feeding response and muscle retention, but only to a degree. If that is all of the exercise they get and are not held that often, then I would say it's a good thing they wrap and hold their prey. If you're handling them regularly then it's a pretty good workout for both the snake and the keeper... Lmao
 
If they are just as happy to slide up next to the rat and eat it I don't see the big deal. Is it bad that they don't strike before eating?

I put the bowl in and with in seconds the snake catches the scent. They go straight to the bowl and start eating. If they wanted to strike it they would. They don't want to strike they want to eat. I just don't see where the strike is a necessary evil especially when they so readily eat with out it. It's not like captive snakes need the skills to catch, and kill their own prey, we do that for them.

It's not like i'm being cruel or even going out of my way to make them do this. The one I fed yesterday is a brand new snake to me. And that was my first attempt to feed her. So occult it's just as instinctual to just eat dead prey as it is to kill live prey.

The only boas I've ever had that wouldn't eat in this manner on the first try were neonates, and babies who up until my receiving them had only been fed live prey. Even those started eating motionless prey with in a few attempts. The longest it ever took was 6 tries on a young boa that I got off a guy in NC. He only fed live so it took a few feedings to break that habit.
 
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