Do you cool your ball pythons for breeding?

This will be my first year breeding but I don't play to ever cool, from what I've read it seems an unnecessary risk of causing RI's. I leave my hotspot the same but my ambient room temps definitely lower, especially at night. We'll see what my success rate is, fingers crossed it's good.

From what I've learned from people that I respect, it is the night cooling that can lead to RI's. Because of the bounce from warm to cold every day, it puts stress on the snakes and can result in respiratory infections. If you lower the temps and leave them there, it doesn't pose the same problem. I do not night drop, but lower the ambient temps a few degrees and the warm spot a few degrees. They go down and stay down until I'm ready to warm them back up.

thank you all cause a year ago I did cool from not really knowing enough and going by some people I didn't know very well and got RI in a few snakes and spent a lot of money to keep them healthy in vet bills and making a nebunization chamber again I thank you all for helping me out as usual great to have a community of hobbyist willing to help others out.

Lance

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Don

From what I've learned from people that I respect, it is the night cooling that can lead to RI's. Because of the bounce from warm to cold every day, it puts stress on the snakes and can result in respiratory infections. If you lower the temps and leave them there, it doesn't pose the same problem. I do not night drop, but lower the ambient temps a few degrees and the warm spot a few degrees. They go down and stay down until I'm ready to warm them back up.

---

this is also how I do it.

Room temp goes down with the season. Hotspot si always hot, and they seek what they want, all of the females go to the front (cool side) once they start breeding. That´s how I did it in my first year breeding, three out of three, 24 eggs total, 0 slugs.

If you don't go through a cooling period, does your female still have to be at least 1500 grams?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AaronAshley

If you don't go through a cooling period, does your female still have to be at least 1500 grams?

---

1500 grams is a personal preference for some breeders. Our minimum weight here is 1200 grams with good body condition.

The female should be the same weight when starting to breed her, regardless of cooling or not. However, if I were to cool, I would make sure my females were bigger than normal so the had even more fat stores. I just don't cool at all, other then the ambient temps dropping naturally for winter time in my house :)

Yes, I cool and I highly recommend it. I drop the hot spot temps at night, 10 degrees for 10 weeks. I've tried not cooling and I get much better results when I cool. When I didn't cool I got a lot of slugs. This past year I didn't get a slug until after I had 50+ good eggs.

i am cooling too,but only hot spot night drop -6 (from 7pm to 7am) and my breeding female's still pounding rat's
cool end temp at 75
i will raise hot spot temp back from january 1. every 10 days +1

I never change the hot spot, just the ambient temps naturally lowered when winter occurs.