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Breaking Hand Association Before Habit Formed

W

Warthog32332

New member
So my little corn Xerxes is doing great he'll be 10 months old this month. And I have noticed he has been forming a hand association. I feed him pinkies still, I dry it thoroughly before feeding and dangle it above with a pair of tweezers. However, lately he has begun to recognize my hand with food which led to a... erm.. *ahem* very avoidable, unpleasent, slightly comedic, and worrying experience which I would like to avoid in the future (Lets just say a parachute for my poor little xerxes would have helped him greatly (FEAR NOT HE IS OKAY)). I also had an experience where he ate a piece of substrate despite my best efforts to remove it from his pinkie before it was too late (I believe he has passed it okay and/or will (Note: Xerxes don't give a f*** when feeding so I wasn't to worried about a regurge)), to no avail. And this recent set of events has made me realize perhaps it would be best to feed him outside of the cage. Would it be alright to just take a bin, place some paper towels down, and simply drop the pinkie in there then move him to the bin? (I have a method in mind to move him in a way as to keep my hands out of harms way, until he breaks the association anyway) but my question is will this be an effecting method at breaking the beginnings of a habit? And if so how would I go about starting to handle him again?
 
Warthog32332 said:
So my little corn Xerxes is doing great he'll be 10 months old this month. And I have noticed he has been forming a hand association. I feed him pinkies still, I dry it thoroughly before feeding and dangle it above with a pair of tweezers. However, lately he has begun to recognize my hand with food which led to a... erm.. *ahem* very avoidable, unpleasent, slightly comedic, and worrying experience which I would like to avoid in the future (Lets just say a parachute for my poor little xerxes would have helped him greatly (FEAR NOT HE IS OKAY)). I also had an experience where he ate a piece of substrate despite my best efforts to remove it from his pinkie before it was too late (I believe he has passed it okay and/or will (Note: Xerxes don't give a f*** when feeding so I wasn't to worried about a regurge)), to no avail. And this recent set of events has made me realize perhaps it would be best to feed him outside of the cage. Would it be alright to just take a bin, place some paper towels down, and simply drop the pinkie in there then move him to the bin? (I have a method in mind to move him in a way as to keep my hands out of harms way, until he breaks the association anyway) but my question is will this be an effecting method at breaking the beginnings of a habit? And if so how would I go about starting to handle him again?
Click to expand...

Hiya Warthog! How ya been?

I believe that the more you handle him, the more acclimated he'll get to you and he'll eventually understand that every time he gets handled, it's not only feeding time. If you ONLY handled him when feeding, well, then ya got Pavlov's Pips. . . uh, . . . er, Dogs! You know what I mean, no? An association is an association, until it isn't! In the world of operant conditioning, there's that little dynamic called "extinction." I think.

In any event, as long as you don't handle him TOO soon after eating, both of you should be fine!!!
 
I would honestly put him in the bin before the food. I feed mine in a separate container, and they know that once they get put in there, it is food time.
If you put the pinky in first, even if you don't have it in contact with your skin, they CAN still smell it.
And since I handle at other times, they associate the BIN with the food, not me.

I am not an expert, but this is what works for me and just my two cents!
Good luck.

Sent from my SM-G903W using Tapatalk
 
Why don't you put the pink in the feeding container (you don't need a paper towel) then put the container on a scale, zero it, put the snake in, weigh it, leave him alone to eat? That's worked for 99% of my babies, forever. For adults I set out the bins, dole out the mice, then take the snakes out one by one, weigh in the scale itself (not their feeding bins) put them in bins, then clean and change their water.
 
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