Breeding Season Cool Down

My Ball Pythons have a dedicated room, so if you only have 1 small rack in your
livingroom this may not work for you - but it's worth striving for!! My room has an ambient temperature of 80 degrees 365 days a year. The hot spot in each tub is created using 4" flexwatt heat tape. The heat tape is regulated using a thermostat (I use Spyder Robotics thermostats exclusively) and it set to create a hot spot of around 90 degrees during the day, 365 days a year.

I fluctuate my hot spot to mimic the seasonal changes as follows:

January - Night drop of 6 degrees
February - Night drop of 3 degrees
March - Night drop of 3 degrees
April - Night drop of 2 degrees
May - Night drop of 2 degrees
June - Night drop of 1 degrees
July - Night drop of 0 degrees
August - Night drop of 0 degrees
September - Night drop of 2 degrees
October - Night drop of 2 degrees
November - Night drop of 6 degrees
December - Night drop of 7 degrees

Remember that you must bring the temperature of the hot spot up during the day, or you risk your snake developing a respiratory infection.

During the breeding season I raise the humidity during November, December and January to 70%. By raising the humidity for those 3 months it will help to trick the snakes into thinking it's winter, as winter is the rainy season.

I start pairing on December 1st.

Always nice to hear different opinions. For me, I keep my snake building at 80 degrees year round. Normally, my humidity is at 60% and my thermostat is set to 87 degrees on the hot side. On October 1st, I drop our temps to 81 degrees. For us, that is a significant enough of a temp drop to do the job and we raise the humidity to 65%. I have never had a RI with my ball pythons. Knock on wood! Also, we have had great success for many seasons doing this. I realize that this is just my opinion and as long as your way works, super!

Rick - that is awesome man and makes perfect sense with the temps, and the humidity change makes perfect sense as well. I think that I will be trying out your method starting once I get home in December and will see how it woorks for me.

This will be my first year cooling. I have had issues with slugs in the past so am going to try another approach. I am cooling every week between Oct 1st and Nov 1st. Until daytime hotspot reaches 88 and night time hotspot reaches 85. The room will stay around 73-75 degrees. This should be cool enough to prevent some slug outs but warm enough to hopefully keep any illnesses away, just in case.