Ball Python Husbandry

Fast Facts

• Identification: Python regius
• Location: Central and West Africa
• Size:
  • 8-10 inches as hatchlings
  • 36-60inches as adults
• Diet: Rodent species
  • African Soft fur rats
  • Common brown rats
  • Mice
• Environmental requirements:
  • 75-78 degrees Fahrenheit ambient temperature
  • 88 degrees Fahrenheit basking spot
• Captive housing requirements:
  • Cages should be, as long as the animal is, and between 1/3 to ½ as wide. Ball pythons can be safely housed in glass terrariums, PVC enclosures, or snake breeding rack systems. We however recommend our Cage Conversion system for retention of humidity and temperature control.
• Lifespan: 20 years

Basic Care

It is especially important to have the enclosure for your new friend established PRIOR to purchasing. This allows you to adjust for temperature and humidity before putting them into an environment that is not correct for them. Setting up this enclosure for your reptile is by far the most important part of caring for them. Establishing a miniature environment that mimics their natural ecosystem can seem daunting but if done properly this can reduce the number of complications that you may encounter in the future.

            Temperature control & Monitoring systems

Maintaining proper temperatures within your animal’s enclosure is essential for proper husbandry and reduces the risk of complications with the animal’s health. This can be accomplished in several ways, the most effective method that I have found is utilizing the Govee environmental humidity and ambient temperature monitors. These connect to your home Wi-Fi and can accurately give ambient temperatures and humidity readings that can be checked through your mobile device. In addition to these, I use a laser measurement device to inspect hot spots regularly. You can also utilize wired temperature probes and hydrometers that are sold at your local pet store but try to avoid the ones that stick to the glass of an enclosure if you are using a modified aquarium or terrarium. These are less accurate and more so display the temperature of the glass rather than the true ambient air temperature of your enclosure.

Ball pythons require an ambient temperature of 75-78 degrees Fahrenheit. With a hot spot on one end of the enclosure that should reach between 84-88 degrees. This will create a temperature gradient that allows your serpent to regulate its body temperature for optimal digestion. Because reptiles are cold-blooded and thus unable to create their own body heat, they rely very much on their environment to regulate their body functions.

Cage Type Pros and Cons

Here at Valhalla Exotics, we recommend and prefer to utilize our own Vanaheim line of conversion products for housing our reptiles. There are several downsides that we will discuss in this section to the traditional methods of keeping reptiles. To combat these, we have designed our products to allow one to modify standard storage containers/totes into working enclosures that have all the benefits of PVC enclosures while maintaining budget costs. Check out our line of products at valhallaexxotics.com for more information.

Traditionally reptiles have been kept in modified aquariums, these functioned well enough when they were the only option but were quickly bested by thinner glass terrariums due to them being lighter and typically having sliding top lids that locked. While more functional for reptile care they still do not function efficiently because they do not retain humidity or temperature very well. Glass enclosures do provide the benefit of allowing unrestricted viewing of your beloved pet but humidity loss from the screen tops means that species that require elevated humidity have difficulty shedding. Glass is also very conductive and heat loss can make it more difficult to maintain accurate temperatures within the enclosure. Therefore, we do not recommend keeping reptiles in glass enclosures at Valhalla exotics.

PVC and plastic-based enclosures are other options that more efficiently retain humidity and enhance temperature regulation. Most come with sliding glass doors and cut-out venting on the sides of the enclosure. The only real downside to these is that PVC is typically quite expensive, and this translates into increased pricing on the prebuilt/pre-cut enclosures.

Substrate

Your local pet store should carry a variety of substrate types and brands, each having different benefits. Aspen, cedar, and coconut are the most common types of substrates available and for most common species these will be acceptable. Here at Valhalla Exotics, we prefer utilizing coco chip bedding because it is absorbent and has some antimicrobial properties. Species that require higher humidity will benefit from being able to increase the humidity within the enclosure by spraying down the bedding without the risk of mold forming, as typically happens with aspen-based bedding.

One other type of bedding to avoid is anything in a fine powder or granule, this includes coconut-based bedding such as eco earth. In my experience I have found that sand and other fine bedding is easier and more likely to be swallowed if the animal is fed inside the enclosure, this can lead to an impaction that may require a trip to the vet or in severe cases the demise of your animal.

Nutrition

Feeding

Ball pythons in the wild will feed on a species of rodent known as African Soft-fur Rats. In most cases, these can be difficult to source locally but captive-bred pythons will readily take the common brown rat or mice. Ball pythons are notorious for being “too docile” and they may decide to be picky eaters. I personally have even had them decide that they prefer a certain color of rat and refuse to eat any variation of that color.

Feeding snakes is a straightforward process that makes keeping them as pets very appealing to people with busy lives. Most snakes as juveniles will only consume one prey item each week, and then once every two to three weeks as adults. In the wild snakes will consume live prey through ambush or active hunting. Python species utilize a method of restraining prey and euthanizing them by constriction. This means that once they have struck (bitten) the prey item, they will quickly pull the prey towards them and wrap the first third of their body or more around the animal and squeeze them, restricting breathing and blood flow.

This process can be distressing for some keepers and presents a risk to your pet as well. Live Rats, mice and African Soft Fur Rats (ASF) can and will attempt to defend themselves and can deliver significant injury using their large incisors. For this reason, we recommend that keepers attempt to train their snakes to take pre-killed or frozen rodents rather than live food items.

This doesn’t mean offering your snake a still frozen rodent! Frozen rodents are euthanized humanely using gas, (typically CO2) and then frozen for preservation. When it is time to feed you should take the item out and allow it to thaw, then present it to your snake. We have used several methods to encourage our snakes to take their frozen-thawed rodents (F/T) but the most effective way we have found is to allow them to thaw completely and then use a small clothes steamer, such as the one you would use to de-wrinkle clothing, to give the rodent some body heat before offering the item to your animal.

There are other methods that can be used to thaw the rodents faster, but we have found that these methods can overheat the item or wash scenting from the prey item and thus increasing the likelihood of refusal.

The actual process of feeding your snake is not complicated but I felt it necessary to mention a couple of key points that will make the feeding process safer for you and for your pet. One subject that I feel is important to touch on is where you feed your snake. Feeding a snake inside of its enclosure presents several risks that can be abated by utilizing an external feeding container. The first risk is to the snake itself. If feeding live prey, the rodent could potentially hide from your snake increaseing the amount of feces and urine that will be present inside your enclosure, but it could also have more of a chance to injure your snake. When feeding live or F/T it is possible that your snake could accidentally get some of their bedding in their mouth and either injure their mouth or swallow the bedding with their food and potentially become impacted. Mouth injuries and infections are potentially detrimental to your beloved pet.

Another risk is that by feeding in your enclosure your snake may begin to associate things that go into their enclosure as food items increasing your risk of being bitten by association. This may not be a significant concern for smaller species or while a snake is young but with larger species, this mistake could present a serious risk of injury.

                    Water

Fresh water should be provided to your animal on a regular basis. Ideally, fresh water every day or every other day would be beneficial to the health of your animal. Occasionally your snake may get bedding into the dish or defecate inside of it and checking regularly to ensure that clean water is available will reduce the risk of infection and dehydration.

Captive Reproduction

Breeding ball pythons in captivity is a relatively simple process that can be exciting and rewarding for keepers at any level of experience. I have been keeping and breeding exotics for 20+ years and still get excited when the babies start to hatch or when a female lays a clutch of eggs!

The first step in this process is to make sure that you have a male and female python. I do not recommend housing them together due to the risk of injury and infection control purposes, but I have also noticed that on occasion if kept together it’s as if the male gets lazy about the breeding process because he always has the female available! I keep all my animals separately housed but generally, I will keep them in the same rack system as I feel this allows the transfer of hormones within the rack to stimulate the male’s breeding response and essentially get him horny enough to lock right away when the time comes!

Once you have sexed a pair of snakes that are of the opposite sex it is important to make sure that your animals are old enough and large enough to breed safely. Males are typically ready to breed within a year to a year and a half old and weigh at least 800-1000 grams. I have heard of males breeding sooner and smaller than that but because they typically stop feeding during the breeding process, which can last several months, and have a higher-than-normal caloric output than normal. I prefer to wait until they are around this size before I allow them to breed so that they do not lose too much weight during the process and end up getting sick or too weak to effectively eat and digest their food.

Females take longer to mature than males and typically need to be around 3 to 4 years old and between 1200 and 1500 grams before I feel they can be safely bred. Females will not only stop feeding during breeding, but they will also not feed during ovulation, maternal incubation, and occasionally for some time after laying their clutch. The female can lose a significant amount of weight during this process and can also have difficulty laying the eggs (becoming “egg bound”) if bred too early and would require emergency veterinary surgery to remove them which would ultimately prevent her from being able to be bred ever again in the future! So, it is essential to make sure that your animals are sufficiently old enough and large enough to breed.

A final note on this is to say that occasionally people will be tempted to overfeed their snake to get them “bigger faster” and get their weight high enough to meet the above criteria for breeding purposes. This practice is both unsafe and can severely reduce the life span of your snakes. It does not speed up their development sexually and because these are ambush predators who do not expend significant energy amounts on a daily basis hunting they are at high risk for the development of heart disease and becoming obese in a similar way that humans with sedentary lifestyles are.

Once you have a pair that is ready the breeding process is simple! I start mine around the time of winter solstice and start lowering the nighttime temperatures gradually. I do this by telling the thermostats on a timer (some thermostats have a setting for this called “night drop”) and I turn off the heater for them for one hour the first night, two hours the second, and three hours the third. I continue this process until they are off for 12 hours and on for 12 starting the cooling in this way stimulates them that the seasons are fluctuating and that it is time to start thinking about reproducing.

**This process is not required and can slightly increase the risk of upper respiratory infections, make sure that your humidity is not super high during this period to help reduce this risk. Ball pythons can be successfully bred without using this process, but I have had more success using it than I have without. **

In late November I will start placing my males into the cages of the female pythons they are intended to breed with and allow them to remain there until a lock is observed. In the beginning, this may not occur right away but as the season progresses you will notice the males locking up right away. Once a lock is observed then the snakes will be allowed to separate naturally and then the male will be moved to the next female he is set to breed with.

I allow our males to see up to five females in a week if he locks each day, at the end of his five days he is placed in his cage for 24 hours. I then offer a small meal (although they typically are more interested in breeding than eating) and give him another 24 hours to himself to allow him to rest if he desires. I will repeat this process each week until the male stops showing interest in the females. This typically will indicate that they are going to ovulate. If ovulation is observed, then I do not introduce the male into her cage any longer as she has already become gravid. At this point in the process, I bring the heaters back on full time to prevent respiratory infections when I add extra humidity by introducing the egg-laying box of moss for the female.

At this point, nature will take its course. The females will shed about 2-3 weeks after ovulation. This is often referred to as the POS or Post Ovulation Shed. There are typically about 30 days after this event until eggs are deposited. About 21 days into this process, you will notice the female’s behavior changing. She will seem uncomfortable and start displaying odd behaviors such as wrapping her water dish and turning on her back to position and warm the eggs evenly. At the 21-day mark, we place an egg-laying box of sphagnum moss and keep it moist for the female to lay her eggs into. In a rack system, it may not be possible to provide a box and then a corner of the cage should be devoted to the sphagnum moss for humidity and egg laying purposes.

Once the female has laid her eggs, she will become defensive and must be carefully removed from the eggs and bathed. Then her cage must be thoroughly cleaned and disinfected to remove all scent of the eggs to increase the likely hood that she will go back on feed within a few days. I like to place the eggs in a Tupperware with vermiculite that has been moistened but is not dripping water when squeezed. If the eggs are together, we leave them together and if they are separate, they are placed in the same position they were found in inside the Tupperware with the vermiculite. Any bad eggs or slugs are thrown out and are not kept. If you are unsure whether an egg is viable then place it in a separate container so that it doesn’t rot and ruin other eggs.

These eggs are then placed in an incubator at 88 degrees for 55-58 days. Humidity is kept high by adding water to the bottom of the incubator and spraying the vermiculite weekly on Sundays. Humidity and temperature should be monitored closely to ensure the survival of the eggs.

Once the first two eggs have pipped, I like to cut the rest of the eggs open slightly to allow a better chance of the snakes escaping from the egg. I allow the babies to remain in the incubator for a short time to finish absorbing the yolk. This can stimulate their brothers and sisters to start moving out of their eggs. Once they are finished absorbing their yolk the babies should be removed and gently cleaned and placed in individual cages with a small hide, small water dish, and paper towels for bedding. Baby python racks work well for this because they provide multiple cages in a small area and help the new babies feel safe and secure. After about a week of life, the new babies will shed and should be offered a small meal. From here they are treated just like regular baby snakes but should not be offered for sale until after they have successfully eaten on their own 3-5 times.

Morphology

Morphology and selective breeding of pythons has become popular with many species of reptiles and ball pythons are no exception. There are now thousands of different morphological patterns and colors to choose from! I will not be diving too deeply into the variations and morph combinations available, but I wanted to give a small overview of how these genetics function in reproduction.

Recessive Genes

Recessive genes require that both parents carry the gene for the desired morph, such as the albino for example. Where this can become confusing is that even if a parent carries the gene recessively that does not mean that the gene will be passed on to the offspring. The way that I help myself understand this is that I picture the gene as half of a circle. When an offspring receives both halves of the gene from each parent, then they will display the morph visually.

If they only receive half of the desired gene, then they will only carry the possibility of passing that half on to their offspring. This example comes into play when breeding animals that are considered heterozygous (Het for short) for the given genetic morph.

For example: if you are breeding a visual albino to a het albino, then every baby will for sure get half of the albino gene from the visual parent. Because the visual parent has a completed albino genetic circle. The other parent only has half of the albino gene, and on average half of the babies will receive that gene from the heterozygous parent. Based on mathematical probability if 100% of the babies have one-half of the recessive gene, and 50% of the babies get it from their het parent then approximately 50% of each clutch should be a visual albino snake.

This gets further complicated when breeding two heterozygous parents. If both parents are known to carry the albino gene, then there is a 50% possibility of each baby getting half of the desired albino gene from each parent. The results from a clutch of babies from these parents would look something like this:

• 25% SHOULD be visually albino
• 25% COULD be heterozygous from parent A
• 25% COULD be het albino from parent B
• 25% COULD be wild types (not carrying any recessive genetics)

Because we are not able to predict which of these babies actually carry the gene until it is confirmed through breeding to another albino or confirmed heterozygous snake. The 75% of babies that have wild-type patterns are labeled 66% het for albino. This is a way of indicating that these animals are the result of confirmed het albino pairings, but it is not guaranteed that they actually carry the gene for albino.

Below I will place the other possible breeding outcomes for reference purposes on genetically recessive traits

• Parent A: het albino – Parent B: normal
  • 50% het for albino
  • 50% wild type
  • Thus, these would be labeled as “possible hets” or “50% het for albino” because you cannot tell if they carry the gene until they are proven but instead of a 66% chance there is only a 50/50 chance that they are one that received half of the gene.
• Parent A: albino (proven) – Parent B: Normal
  • 100% het albino
  • because these would definitely get half of the gene from parent A they would all carry the gene but none of them would display the visual albino traits.

Dominant Genes

Dominant genetics are more predictable, and the circle metaphor used for recessive genetics is no longer necessary, as each gene is a complete circle. This means that when an offspring is born if they visually show the desired gene then they have the completed gene. If they do not visually show the gene then they do not have it at all, there are no hets for dominant genetics.

The example we will use for dominant genes is the spider gene. If you have a genetical spider parent and you breed that to a wild type or normal, on average 50% of the babies will be spider and 50% will be normal.

In theory, if you breed a spider to a spider then you should have 50% spiders and 50% SUPER spiders… however, this is what differentiates dominant genes from co-dominant genes such as pastels, or leucistic! Dominant genes are also considered terminal genes because if both parents in the breeding combination carry the gene, then their offspring will be born with significant deformities that are life-threatening and either die shortly after hatching or die in incubation.

Co-dominant Genes

Co-dominant genes are the super forms of dominant genes that are not terminal genes. This means that these are essentially the inverse of recessive genetics!

If you want to make a blue-eyed leucistic or BEL ball python, then you need two codominant genes that result in such. The most commonly used genes for this morph are butters, lesser, and mojaves. Although none of these genetic morphs have white in them once an animal receives the gene twice it alters the gene to create an all-white snake! Below are some examples of breeding results for reference.

• Parent A: lesser – parent B: lesser
  • 50% lesser
  • 25% BEL (super lesser)
  • 25% normal
  • Remember that the math being done for these genetics is based on EACH EGG/baby. Thus, there is a 50/50 chance that each baby gets the lesser gene from one parent or the other, when you try to see what the chance is that the baby gets the gene from BOTH parents you must multiply 50% by 50%… half of 50% = 25% meaning only 25 percent of the babies will get it from both. On the same side because it’s a coin flip for each parent whether they pass it on it is also a probability that some of the babies will not get the gene from either parent.
• Parent A: lesser – Parent B: Normal
  • 50% lesser
  • 50% normal
  • Remember there are no hets for dominant genes.