Ball Pythons are a bit addictive. I don’t think I have ever met someone who has just one. It may start out as one or two but can quickly become as many as 10, 20, or even 100 ball pythons.
That’s how it happened to me anyway- it was about 13 years ago when I got my first ball python from PetCo. She is still in my collection today. Now I have around 200 in my collection and the rest is now history. Somewhere along the way I blinked and my collection exploded! It took all of those 13 years to get where it is today.
Over that period, I have used nearly every cage system you can imagine. When I had a few snakes, I liked neodesha or vision cages because they looked cool and could easily lock. It allowed me to show my snakes in what I thought was a professional manner. I never cared for aquariums but have used them as well over the years. They don’t hold humidity well, unless you make a special top for it or cover the top with a piece of plastic. I remember at one point my room was lined with cages and had heat pads for each snake’s cage. I am surprised I did not burn the house down with that setup. When you have a few snakes it is easier to use a tank, neo, or vision cage and heat the individual cage, but when you have hundreds of snakes, it is time to upgrade to a rack system of some kind and heat the reptile room.
Today, all of my animals are in a climate controlled building with rack systems lining the walls. I have never heated an individual cage in the snake building and have had great success breeding not only ball pythons, but Burmese Pythons, corn snakes and several other colubrid species.
Racks are the easiest and quickest to clean. I have double pans for each rack so all I have to do when cleaning cages is pull the tub out, remove the snake, place it in the new tub and then back into the rack!
The building stays between 80 and 90 degrees. During the summer time, the temperature is allowed to approach 90 and in the winter the temperature drops to the lowest of 80. The average temp in the snake building is 85. For years, I used to keep a daily log of AM and PM temperatures. It is amazing to look back at that data and see when snakes bred, ovulated and laid eggs- I am still going through it all but it appears that the snakes had a preference temperature for each event. That will be discussed more indepthly later.
Comment below with any future topis you would like to see discussed!
TheOddBall 