King snake breeding help--He tried to eat her

My kings have been eating very well and the female shed a couple days ago. So I put her in with the male today. They were fine at first then the male went straight for her head. I mean he was head on like a semi truck and he had her whole head in his mouth and starting to coil. I quickly picked them both up and was headed for the sink but he let go. I have heard kings can be tricky but that was scary. Not to mention the female is like 2 times his size and she didn't even fight.

If your experienced with king breeding please give me some advice.

Thanks!

Edit: Mods sorry if I put this in the wrong forum.

I used to breed a lot of kings. The scary part about them is that the male often grabs the female by the neck when breeding. At first, it looks like he wants to eat her. But coiling is not good. I generally didn't see that behavior.

I know some people who would feed them small to moderate meals, and then wait a couple of hours until the feeding response subsided. Then they would pair them up. I never actually did that myself. I found that when they were ready to breed, they did, although I still monitored them closely.

Another problem with kings that I had occasionally, but not too often, is that a female in the nest box would turn around and eat her eggs! Not much you can do about that, except monitor as closely as possible, and remove her quickly once she is finished.

Good luck!

Thanks Kathy. I might try that meal thing in a day or two. If it doesn't work I think I'll just wait until her next shed.

And don't keep them paired up long AFTER you witness breeding. Although I've left them for 24-48 hours before, I had one pair turn into a big male once....

Getula are really weird. I had one male that would breed one female every year and try to eat the other -every time. They were roughly the same size, I never understood what that was about. I've also had pairs that would fight. Milks have seldom acted like this for me, even though I usually say "there's no difference between a milksnake and a king."