All,

Been considering a reptile of some sort for my son (8) for a couple of months, now. Took him to Repticon in Atlanta, where I met a few breeders, one appears to be here, Slowcountry Balls. We've looked at Bearded Dragons, Milk Snakes, Sand Boas, Rainbow Boas......we just keep coming back to Balls. One of my daughters (13) became very intrigued during one of our trips to check out some, and it is possible we'd look at a couple.

Have to admit, I'm a bit overwhelmed with info. I don't think I even know enough to ask the right questions. For example, enclosure. Glass seems most readily available, but it seems that folks here prefer polymeric for I believe heat retention. The pet stores (sadly, a place here called The Critter Barn closed a few years ago, so I'm left with the big stores - though one has some great employees who are all BP owners) seem to only sell "kits" that contain the heating element, baskign light, etc. So if I go with say an Animal Plastics enclosure, I'm flying blind for what kind of stuff I need to finish off the terrarium. If I have two Balls in there, do I need multiple zones, or will the pad heat a large enough area for both? How many hides, one warm one cool for each snake (total of 4), or what? Basking lamps? If I get an AP enclosure, should I go big, and start with a divider to keep them in a smaller space initially, or just have teh whole thing open to them? Should I get a small one, then upgrade? Is glass really that bad (it seems better for display)? So tons of really basic questions. But I'd like to start working on this stuff well before we get a snake (and it appears that AP has some lead time for their enclosures, so I may need to be way ahead).

Compared to other snakes, they seem to largely be considered more of an "intermediate" type of snake, compared to the Kings/Rats/Milks.......yet the Balls are considered the most docile. Is this due to their tendency to be finnicky eaters when moved into a new home?

At any rate, I am sure all of my questions are here on the forum, but I don't even know which questions to ask. The proprietor of Slowcountry Balls was fantastic, and my intent is to go to him when that time comes, but I don't want to inundate him with tons of questions that I can find if I have teh right resource available.

So, any recommendations for a Ball Pythons 101 type data source?