help Newb rescued some balls and now have an unplanned pregnancy lol

[thegamewasdone]

Me and my friend have four ball pythons between us they pair up around the same size 2 around 4feet and 2 around 2feet the 2 large ones are separate now the smaller ones are together. the larger of the smaller ones is supposed to be a male but one of the 4 foot ones may be a male also. the larger ones have always been together and stayed together until we got the smaller one that supposedly a male and then one night they wrecked the enclosure and its like it broke up the family. I think one of them might be pregnant and would love to successfully breed it. Didn't plan for it to happen this soon. thought the male was to young any advice or links would be AWESOME. I didn't know they would eat each other; is it a very pressing danger they are fed regularly every week and never go without. want to breed them really bad and it would be cool if one is pregnant i really don't want to lose any clutches and am trying to learn as much as possible to maximize the chances of success:*) also if their in captivity how much does it really matter about the time of year when I'm in control of all the elements (temperature, lighting, etc.) SORRY its SOO long I'm just really worried and real new anything you can email me @ thegamewasdone@yahoo.com thanks for reading the whole thing

[lasweetswan]

......I think you should definitely do a bit more homework before considering breeding.

[Skittles1101]

......I think you should definitely do a bit more homework before considering breeding.

+1...do a lot more homework on the breed and on breeding and then consider it. Snakes shouldn't be housed together, regardless of size especially without any kind of quarantine.....

[jsmorphs2]

Welcome to the forum .

First off, you should house all of them separately. Housing males together can lead to them fighting and it is very stressful to them and housing males & females will lead to unplanned clutches. Also, you should get your husbandry spot on and learn as much as you can before you consider breeding. Caring for babies isn't hard but you should definitely have experience under your belt before you bring new pythons into the world .

If the larger one is already gravid you need to separate her asap to reduce the stress of being house with another BP. You just need to keep the temps and humidity stable while she is gravid. Before she lays you need to get an incubator up and running. I wouldn't recommend you letting her maternally incubate since you lack the experience to see if something isn't right. Incubators can be purchased online and some are relatively inexpensive. Once she lays you need to incubate the eggs @ 88-89 degrees @ 100% humidity (but not WET) and they should hatch in 55-60 days.

Hope everything works out.

[Quiet Tempest]

I understand your enthusiasm and the want to dive into breeding, but in all honesty I would focus on the balls you already have and getting the housing situation figured out. They definitely don't need to be housed together. Snakes are not social animals and only share company with each other on a temporary basis in the wild. Get individual enclosures for each snake or build a rack system so that each has its own tub asap. Once you've gotten that squared away and have had some time to get a better feel for basic husbandry - establish a good feeding routine with your animals, maintain temps and humidity at proper levels within each snake's enclosure, and learn to read your snakes' behavior and health at a glance then (and only then) would I start considering breeding them.