male combat...

Popping adults takes quite a bit of gentle strength. The easiest snakes to pop are hatchlings.. it gets tougher from there, once they gain more muscle control.
I def. think that this person needs to get the snakes to an experienced person to probe them for her. Popping and probing can be harmful to the snake if they are done by someone who doesn't know what they're doing; it is something that needs to really be watched, to learn..
I know that I personally suck at it! Luckily my husband has a hidden snake-sexing talent.. works with me.

Hi all, first of all I'm absolutely new in BP breeding.
I also read Barkers book and what they stated about combat in BPs. Despite I think this is by far the best book of BPs I choosed to combat my pastel in order to speed up a little its breeding behavior. The pastel male was aprox 1000g and its oponent half of that to avoid the posibility of my pastel being beated by its normal oponent. They did combat for about 2 minutes and finallly the smaller one runaway.
I then remplaced the looser with my female and some 15 hours later there was a good lock.
This is just my experience, so I'm not telling that combating is good or bad.
sorry for my english!!

I would not combat my males. They are too valuable to me both as pets, and as purchases. If one got injured, I could not look myself in the mirror.

Hi, Ginevive, I dont think ball pythons can really hurt each other during combat. There are no bites involved, just some kind of pushing....

Hey all quick question. I was recently talking to a breeder and I was telling me that even though its very rare some females probe deep. true or false?