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Adult cornsnake is aggressive on approach

S

Silly_Silicon

New member
Hi,

New member here, I've had a cornsnake since he was a baby, have had him for 3 years now. When he was young, I handled him much more, and I could just reach right in and grab him, he didn't even flinch. As he's grown he's gotten more agitated. He started on frozen mice and has been eating live for almost his entire adult life now. I take him out to feed. I don't get to handle him much anymore so most of the time I take him out, it's to feed. He is always aggressive when I approach. It's like he is blind and smells nothing, I can hover around his tank and make my presence known and come at him slowly with clean hands, but he treats me like an aggressor, or food. He WILL bite, I usually have to distract him with an object before I can grab him. The very moment I have him lifted off the bed of his tank in my hands, he is absolutely fine and I can handle him any way I please.

His last feeding I put him in the large box lid I feed him in and he quickly slithered right out and started a straight path across my living room. I knew he was looking for his mouse and would certainly bite me, so I moved around him and he just followed my movement and made a b-line for me as I tried to get around him to pick him up without getting bitten.

Is my snake blind or what? I feed him once a week, he's never once turned down a meal, it's like he's always hungry (I feed him 2 mice consecutively if the pet shop doesn't have any larger ones)

I'm sick of being afraid to handle my snake and having to play distraction games to avoid being bitten by what should be one of the most docile snakes known to man.
 
You have conditioned your snake to expect to be fed at every handling, so of course he's in feeding mode every time. The only way to break the cycle is to handle between feedings.
 
It seems more difficult than that though. Even when he knows it's not a mouse, he's extremely agitated and tries to flee from me, shakes his tail, and will back around to bite at me to warn me off. He's never received food inside his tank once in his entire life, but getting him out of these is a battle every time.
 
I think Diamondlil has it right.

It might help you to get over your fear of him to wear gloves. Just lightweight things like gardening gloves or something similar. It isn't like a cornsnake bite is very bad, anyway, but it will help you be more confident, and thus less likely to move in tense, jerky, movements that will only make the snake more likely to strike at you.

I bet if you do that and handle him every day (skipping days when he's digesting) for a while, you'll soon see an improvement. It doesn't need to be a long handling session: even just long enough to get him out of his cage and put him away again should help.

A few things to be aware of:
- Males can act weirdly during breeding season, although I'm not sure I've ever heard of one being this aggressive just due to the season. If this just started recently, he may go back to his normal behavior soon.
- A hungry snake is more likely to be aggressive. Are you sure he's getting enough to eat?
 
They didn't say fixing it would be easy, but the situation is one of your creation, possibly made worse by the time of year. Springtime is mating season for these snakes, and males in particular tend to get a little wacky this time of year, so that may be part of the issue. However, I agree with the prior posts that you have conditioned the snake to react this way by making two particular choices - feeding live food and handling only for feeding purposes.

Your snake is in feeding mode now every time you handle him, because that is what he has been conditioned to expect, but you can change that conditioning by handling between feedings if you wish to change the behavior. I'd recommend waiting 2 days after a feed for digestion, then handling when he isn't especially hungry or looking for food. Yes, you may get bitten - under NO circumstances should he go back if he bites, as that perpetuates his reasons for biting.

As for the live feeders, I'm at a loss as to why you would switch from frozen (which he was already eating!) back to live. Did he refuse frozen at some point, or was there anything else to justify the switch? Feeding live will ratchet up their feeding response, so again, you've engineered the situation a bit. I'm not trying to beat you up here, but your snake is doing what you have "trained" him to do, and it is totally your decision to: do something about it and reduce the aggression, change your husbandry so you don't have to handle him to feed and make him display only, or do neither and live with the situation. I suspect you could easily tame him back down with a bit of effort...
 
Thank you for your advice guys. I will start trying to handle him more often. To answer the questions, I feed him one large mouse a week, I haven't read anywhere that an adult should be eating more than this but I'm open to criticism. As for why he eats live, honestly, its been very convenient for me to stop by the pet store and buy a live mouse on my way home from work each Friday. He'll gladly eat anything, he's never turned down food once in his life, but I just found live to be more convenient than dealing with thawing and serving warm soggy mice. I'm willing to go back to the frozen ones if you guys think that live feeding can cause a male to become more aggressive. This doesn't seem to be a spring thing, perhaps he's a little more active and searching around his tank these days, but he's been reacting poorly to my entrance into his tank for the better part of a year now and I thought maybe someone could help me figure out how to get a more docile snake.
 
Take him out with a snake hook if necessary, at least until you get more comfortable with each other, but I agree to up the handlings between feedings. Even my nastiest snake has tamed down with frequent, calm handling. :) As for switching back to f/t, just do a search for the snake called Rat Bait on this forum, as was brought up in another thread where the owner feeds live. That alone should be reason enough to deal with the "serving soggy mice."
 
You can also just kill the mice before feeding him.
Won't solve parasite issues, but at least you're not risking him having his eye bit out.

And.. just need to handle him more often, he will probably chill out. I have one snake that I always get out with a hook first. She is fine once out.
 
I agree with using gloves if you need to. About 3 years ago I got a kingsnake that had a pretty nasty attitude. He would strike and bite the entire time I handled him. He even tried getting his teeth into my face. But I was able to dodge that. However he normally targeted my hands. After about 8 months of handling him with gloves and biting the gloves I guess he figured out that it wasn't doing him any good. Since then he has been a very well behaved guy.

I do have a corn snake that I've had since a hatchling that has always detested being handled. I stuck with it but after 3 years I have still yet to calm him down. Some snake are just like that.

Hopefully you can recondition your snake to not always be in feeding mode when he sees you. Which I agree may be the case. I have noticed that even after a month of only handling snakes during feeding time, they start to expect food every time I come to get them out. Luckily most (if not all) of my snakes are pretty calm.
 
Hi, just saw your post. My question is about how often you are feeding him, in addition to what everyone else has said about frozen vs. live. I am new to corns, got my first one, Ki, as an adult a few months ago. Several people have told me that I was feeding him too often at once a week, and that adult corns only need to eat every 10 to 14 days. That would give you more time to handle him between feedings!

I also wonder why you are feeding him live mice. I used to have a boa I fed live rodents to - now I feed my Ki frozen, and I like it so much more! I don't have to worry about aggressive mice or parasites - and I just keep a small supply in the freezer (hidden in their box in the back, 'cause it freaks my family out). Maybe yours would behave less aggressively if he wasn't getting ready to catch and kill something?

One more thought: When I first got Ki, I thought he was acting aggressive and "on the alert" whenever I put my hand in. Now I think he just looks like that - he probably is alerted, but he comes to me and gets a smell, and then he relaxes. No problem to pick him up.

All this said, I don't know much about this yet, so forgive my speculations!
 
lynda said:
Hi, just saw your post. My question is about how often you are feeding him, in addition to what everyone else has said about frozen vs. live. I am new to corns, got my first one, Ki, as an adult a few months ago. Several people have told me that I was feeding him too often at once a week, and that adult corns only need to eat every 10 to 14 days. That would give you more time to handle him between feedings!

I also wonder why you are feeding him live mice. I used to have a boa I fed live rodents to - now I feed my Ki frozen, and I like it so much more! I don't have to worry about aggressive mice or parasites - and I just keep a small supply in the freezer (hidden in their box in the back, 'cause it freaks my family out). Maybe yours would behave less aggressively if he wasn't getting ready to catch and kill something?

One more thought: When I first got Ki, I thought he was acting aggressive and "on the alert" whenever I put my hand in. Now I think he just looks like that - he probably is alerted, but he comes to me and gets a smell, and then he relaxes. No problem to pick him up.

All this said, I don't know much about this yet, so forgive my speculations!
Click to expand...

I know your question wasn't directed at me. But I thought I would give you my advice on how often to feed. Generally you can feed adults every 10-14 days no problem. However if you want to feed once a week you can. I would just advise paying attention to their weight and make sure they don't start getting fat. Personally I only feed once a week if I'm giving small mice or weanlings. If the mouse is on the larger side, I give two weeks before feeding again.

Pretty much I order in bulk. I always have more smaller mice laying around than I do large adult mice. I feed large mice every two weeks. So once I use up all the big mice, I feed off the left over smaller ones and feed those once a week (they digest much faster) until I'm almost out. Then I place another order.
 
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