Keeping BPs Together???

[kimmm]

I have two female BPs that I have kept together in the same tank for months now. I just recently bought a male BP at the White Plains expo. Is it okay if I keep him in the same tank too? They are all still babies, all about 7-8 months old.

[Mike41793]

Oh boy here we go...

I would recommend that you keep all your bp's in separate enclosures/tubs. You *can* keep bp's together, but I wouldn't recommend it to a novice keeper.

[The Serpent Merchant]

BP's should not be housed together at all.


Cohabitating reptiles even as the same species is not recommended. Insead of just telling you "no" I'll list the common reasons why.
1) Cannibalism, not common, but there are DOCUMENTED cases. This alone isn't worth the risk.
2) Stress. Even the most friendly snakes get stressed out, so why cause the stress? Snakes have no want or need to be with another snake unless it's for breeding purposes. Other than that, it's just an unwanted roommate that they can't get away from.
3) Space. They will constantly try to dominate eachother for the best spots in the enclosure, even if you have multiple hides, you'll mainly see them together in one spot. People usually see this as "cuddling". It's not cuddling, they are fighting over the best spot.
4) You wake up in the morning after feeding and there's a regurgitated mouse. Which one did it?
5) One gets sick, now both are sick. That's 2X the vet bills, 2X the medications, and 2X the stress.
6) You are told the new snake you bought is the same sex as the one you already have. a year later, you find eggs in the enclosure. You have not prepared, no incubator, no space for babies, and no one to sell them to. What do you do now? The pet store/vet/person sexed them wrong.
7) Quarantine. How are you going to quarantine the new snake away from your original one? As you gain more experience, you'll find that quarantine is a NECESSITY. You could get a perfectly healthy snake, or one covered in mite eggs that hatch 3 days after you bring it home. Now both snakes have mites. Snakes also can take a long time to start showing symptoms of illness, now you got your original snake sick because you didn't quarantine.

Those are just the more known and common issues with housing multiple reptiles. The list goes on. The only pro to housing them together is to save space in your house by only having one enclosure, but is it worth it? That is up to you. People that say "I house two together and they are fine", they are fine now but with them being housed together there is NO guarantee it will stay that way forever. The only way to avoid future issues is to house them separately.

[KMG]

The females shouldn't be together. Why do you keep them that way.

I guess you don't quarantine new animals?

[angllady2]

I have to tell you, housing them together is not a very good idea. It can be done, but it really takes a lot of experience to do it correctly. You run a lot of real risks housing two or more snakes together, and the benefits are really negligible.

Among other things, illness is a real risk. If one gets sick, then they all will be. This means triple the vet bills, triple the medication, and triple the headache. And another consideration is cannibalism. There have been a number of documented cases of one ball python eating it's cage mate, which usually results in both dying. There is also a great risk involved in feeding several snakes housed together. Not only is it a lot more difficult to get them all eating, if one has an aggressive feeding response, there is a real chance another might get bitten or even constricted by mistake.

Yes, there are people who house ball pythons and other snakes together successfully, but for most of us, it's simply not something we attempt. Too many risks involved with no real payoff for doing it. We as a group really recommend one snake to an enclosure. You can be sure each animal is eating well, is not stressed out, and if an illness crops up, you only need to treat one.

I wish you all the best, but I really hope you will reconsider how you house your snakes.


Gale

[dr del]

No.

Quarantine is an important safety feature and only gets more important with each new snake you get.

When just starting out one snake per enclosure is by far the easiest and best way for you to go.

[Skiploder]

A rehash of a rehash that has been rehashed countless times. While counseling inexperienced keepers on the risks of co-habitating certain species is fine, doling out husbandry recommendations for "reptiles even of the same species" is not. Especially when you have no experience with those species. At least Gale did the correct thing and limited her advice to ball pythons and beginning keepers. She's was right to express caution.

To anyone else who would try to counsel husbandry advice with a blanket brush to cover all snakes: Ever tried to breed thrasops, pseustes, philodryas spp. or spilotes without cohabitating them? These species are well nigh impossible to breed unless cohabitated together year round. Given the proper space and in the care of experienced keepers, many species do wonderfully cohabitated together. They feed fine, crap fine and breed fine. In decades of cohabitating species not prone to ophiophagy, I have never had a case of spontaneous illness break out, nor have I had one mate decide to lunch on the other, nor have I ever had two snakes fight over the same spot.

OP:

Having said that, keep your ball pythons in separate tupperware bins. It's actually more expensive and more work to cohabitate two snakes in a way that provides for all their needs.

Please also remember:

1. Feed your snakes on a silk doily so that they don't ingest substrate when eating. Although no one can really cite a necropsy backed reason to do this, 8 out of 10 people who have owned a snake for less than a year seem worried about substrate ingestion, so you should be too.

2. Keep the hot spot at exactly 90-92 degrees and the cool end at 77 to 80. Ball pythons in the wild are not exposed to temperature variations outside of this range.

3. Provide realistic belly heat like they would get in a termite mound. All termite mounds in Africa are made by termites sponsored by Calorique.

4. Feed them a domestic rat or mouse diet like they would get in the wild. Ignore that studies have shown that the majority of their diet is avian and that they have to climb to get it.

5. Pine substrate has not been proven to be harmful to snakes, but a bunch of people who have never used it claim it is even though they cannot point out one health related instance to one snake. Go with the rest of the sheep and claim an issue with something you've never had an issue with based on the word of someone else who has never had an issue with it.

6. Mercilessly mist and moisten your tupperware tub so that the humidity stays at 70% and mold and bacteria become an issue. Forget that it is much healthier and beneficial to construct humid hides.

7. Make sure that two male ball pythons never make eye contact or a battle for the dominant alpha ball position in the pack may break out.

8. Keep in mind that many of the food related morphs are tastier to non-food related morphs. If you try to breed a chocolate to a fire, expect one of those oh-so-often incidents of ball python cannibalism that we ALWAYS never hear about.

Most importantly, gain experience by reading, not by actually experiencing any of the techniques or advice you are giving out. Rehash and regurge all of the crap you read on forums like this so that a new generation of herpers cannot learn from your lack of experience. Understand that there is only one way to do things and that is the way the herd tells you to do things. Anything outside of that is taboo and you will get negative rep points for applying logic and actual experience to these discussions.

Hope that helps!

[kimmm]

BP's should not be housed together at all.


Cohabitating reptiles even as the same species is not recommended. Insead of just telling you "no" I'll list the common reasons why.
1) Cannibalism, not common, but there are DOCUMENTED cases. This alone isn't worth the risk.
2) Stress. Even the most friendly snakes get stressed out, so why cause the stress? Snakes have no want or need to be with another snake unless it's for breeding purposes. Other than that, it's just an unwanted roommate that they can't get away from.
3) Space. They will constantly try to dominate eachother for the best spots in the enclosure, even if you have multiple hides, you'll mainly see them together in one spot. People usually see this as "cuddling". It's not cuddling, they are fighting over the best spot.
4) You wake up in the morning after feeding and there's a regurgitated mouse. Which one did it?
5) One gets sick, now both are sick. That's 2X the vet bills, 2X the medications, and 2X the stress.
6) You are told the new snake you bought is the same sex as the one you already have. a year later, you find eggs in the enclosure. You have not prepared, no incubator, no space for babies, and no one to sell them to. What do you do now? The pet store/vet/person sexed them wrong.
7) Quarantine. How are you going to quarantine the new snake away from your original one? As you gain more experience, you'll find that quarantine is a NECESSITY. You could get a perfectly healthy snake, or one covered in mite eggs that hatch 3 days after you bring it home. Now both snakes have mites. Snakes also can take a long time to start showing symptoms of illness, now you got your original snake sick because you didn't quarantine.

Those are just the more known and common issues with housing multiple reptiles. The list goes on. The only pro to housing them together is to save space in your house by only having one enclosure, but is it worth it? That is up to you. People that say "I house two together and they are fine", they are fine now but with them being housed together there is NO guarantee it will stay that way forever. The only way to avoid future issues is to house them separately.

Thanks for all the information! I'll be separating the females tomorrow.

The females shouldn't be together. Why do you keep them that way.

I guess you don't quarantine new animals?

I kept the females together because the breeder I got the second one from told me I should. & actually, I do quarantine new animals. I kept them separated for a month when I got the second one.

I have to tell you, housing them together is not a very good idea. It can be done, but it really takes a lot of experience to do it correctly. You run a lot of real risks housing two or more snakes together, and the benefits are really negligible.

Among other things, illness is a real risk. If one gets sick, then they all will be. This means triple the vet bills, triple the medication, and triple the headache. And another consideration is cannibalism. There have been a number of documented cases of one ball python eating it's cage mate, which usually results in both dying. There is also a great risk involved in feeding several snakes housed together. Not only is it a lot more difficult to get them all eating, if one has an aggressive feeding response, there is a real chance another might get bitten or even constricted by mistake.

Yes, there are people who house ball pythons and other snakes together successfully, but for most of us, it's simply not something we attempt. Too many risks involved with no real payoff for doing it. We as a group really recommend one snake to an enclosure. You can be sure each animal is eating well, is not stressed out, and if an illness crops up, you only need to treat one.

I wish you all the best, but I really hope you will reconsider how you house your snakes.


Gale

Thank you for the positive answer. I'll separate the females tomorrow. I can't tonight because I'm sick in bed.

[snakesRkewl]

sarcasm isn't a lost art ...

[dr del]

A rehash of a rehash that has been rehashed countless times. While counseling inexperienced keepers on the risks of co-habitating certain species is fine, doling out husbandry recommendations for "reptiles even of the same species" is not. Especially when you have no experience with those species. At least Gale did the correct thing and limited her advice to ball pythons and beginning keepers. She's was right to express caution.

To anyone else who would try to counsel husbandry advice with a blanket brush to cover all snakes: Ever tried to breed thrasops, pseustes, philodryas spp. or spilotes without cohabitating them? These species are well nigh impossible to breed unless cohabitated together year round. Given the proper space and in the care of experienced keepers, many species do wonderfully cohabitated together. They feed fine, crap fine and breed fine. In decades of cohabitating species not prone to ophiophagy, I have never had a case of spontaneous illness break out, nor have I had one mate decide to lunch on the other, nor have I ever had two snakes fight over the same spot.

OP:

Having said that, keep your ball pythons in separate tupperware bins. It's actually more expensive and more work to cohabitate two snakes in a way that provides for all their needs.

Please also remember:

1. Feed your snakes on a silk doily so that they don't ingest substrate when eating. Although no one can really cite a necropsy backed reason to do this, 8 out of 10 people who have owned a snake for less than a year seem worried about substrate ingestion, so you should be too.

2. Keep the hot spot at exactly 90-92 degrees and the cool end at 77 to 80. Ball pythons in the wild are not exposed to temperature variations outside of this range.

3. Provide realistic belly heat like they would get in a termite mound. All termite mounds in Africa are made by termites sponsored by Calorique.

4. Feed them a domestic rat or mouse diet like they would get in the wild. Ignore that studies have shown that the majority of their diet is avian and that they have to climb to get it.

5. Pine substrate has not been proven to be harmful to snakes, but a bunch of people who have never used it claim it is even though they cannot point out one health related instance to one snake. Go with the rest of the sheep and claim an issue with something you've never had an issue with based on the word of someone else who has never had an issue with it.

6. Mercilessly mist and moisten your tupperware tub so that the humidity stays at 70% and mold and bacteria become an issue. Forget that it is much healthier and beneficial to construct humid hides.

7. Make sure that two male ball pythons never make eye contact or a battle for the dominant alpha ball position in the pack may break out.

8. Keep in mind that many of the food related morphs are tastier to non-food related morphs. If you try to breed a chocolate to a fire, expect one of those oh-so-often incidents of ball python cannibalism that we ALWAYS never hear about.

Most importantly, gain experience by reading, not by actually experiencing any of the techniques or advice you are giving out. Rehash and regurge all of the crap you read on forums like this so that a new generation of herpers cannot learn from your lack of experience. Understand that there is only one way to do things and that is the way the herd tells you to do things. Anything outside of that is taboo and you will get negative rep points for applying logic and actual experience to these discussions.

Hope that helps!

**sigh**

Says BP's right there in the thread title.

We all know this is the BP keeping paddling pool - it's designed to be.

Do you honestly think the best advice we can give in this instance is "maybe but it's complicated and you will have to know a bit more to avoid problems"? We do have to give some kind of answer after all every time the question gets asked without really knowing the members level of experience.

Or have I just been up too long and taking things too seriously again?

I hate 4am.


dr del