I switched to a pair of rubber tipped tongs a few months ago. I have a couple of pretty aggressive strikers and worried that they would hurt themselves on the metal. Of course now I’m having a issue of them striking the rubber and getting stuck. Last night I had one really dug in, his bottom jaw was sunk into the rubber and on top was the rear end of the rat (basically perfectly placed in his mouth.) He did not want to let go.
After about 20 minutes I picked him up and put him in the shower and sprayed him with warm water until he finally dropped the tongs enough for me to gently jiggle them out (without making any disturbing crackling sounds.) He never dropped the rat.
Now of course I’m worried that his mouth may be damaged. I know that they constantly lose teeth. Should I be mindful and skip feeding him next week in case he needs to heal up? Is my technique off? Any tips on avoiding this happening again?
Rubber tipped tongs are more of designed for feeding lizards. I have had aggressive strikes on my metal tongs and my snakes have never hurt themselves. Even if they were to break a tooth chances are they would be fine, however, I have heard of infection setting in when teeth are ripped out. Switch back to metal tongs and keep an eye out for swelling/suddenly refusing food.
I got a pair of hemostats, we’ll see how that goes next week.
Normally when I feed my snakes I use metal tongs and they’ve had an occasional bump but none ever got hurt. When I feed I normally try to grab the rodent by the tail and get the snake to focus on it’s head so it grabs farthest away from the tongs and because it’s usually easier on them to find the right angle to get it down since they already would have the head in their mouth