help about buying my ball python

If it helps any - I know of several people who have rescued under nourished ball pythons, and once they were fed properly, quickly caught up to their similarly aged counterparts.

I'd be less concerned with the age, than the overall health of the animal (does it have nice muscle tone, does it seem to be proportionally sized (no skin hanging off its sides), etc).

I don't sell any of my hatchlings until they've had a minimum of three consecutive meals with me. Some babies won't take their first meal as late as a month after they hatched.

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Originally Posted by DarkSmoke

maltese is my first language so sorry for my bad grammers, and no i dont know much about balls i know about corns. thanks for confirming that the petshop that told me they only hatch at the end of summer is wrong, as you can see petshops here aren't that much of experts neither so its not really my fault from getting bad information about balls.

the reason i want a one so young is very simple, i bought my first corn snake 1year4months old and it was too much damn small for his age and he still is (was about 40cm at the age of 1year4months.) when i asked the petshop why he said that they don't feed them alot so they stun their growth, thats why i said i will never buy a snake that age again. now i called the petshop that told me he will have ball pythons in 2weeks which i said earlier about and told me that he's gonna have hatchlings in about 3weeks. and he also told me that they are gonna be about 4months and they never have younger then that. so its probably as you say i must find a local breeder which i don't even know if there is one on this small island since snakes aint so common pets here.

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You are typically going to run into this problem with any snake you get at a pet shop--most pet shops feed "maintenance diets" to their reptile stock to cut down on overhead costs. However, as mentioned previously, ball pythons can typically catch back up quickly once they're put on regular meals. You should be safe buying one anywhere from 2-6 months.

Also, since your local pet shop doesn't seem to be much help on caring for your new animal, check out the care sheets here on this site. Hopefully that will get you educated before you get your new addition. The caresheets here are going to be in inches/feet and degrees Fahrenheit though, rather than metric. Here's the temp degree conversion for you:

degrees F minus 32 times .5555 equals degrees C.

So for your ambient ball python temperature, you're looking at:

85 degrees F - 32 X .5555 = 29.44 degrees C

Hope this helps!

thanks alot for the great help and thanks for clearing up that the ball will catch. so in 3weeks the petshop will have the new ball pythons which he told me they will be about 4months old i'll buy on of those. and i will give a look at the caresheets on this website too. thanks alot again guys, peace! :):)