Quick Question regarding maternal incubation...

My pair has lived together forever...Female 15 last march and male is 11. they have cohabited since the male was brought home. I have had them a few years got them from my old boss. So my question is while the female is doing her job is it OK to leave the male in the cage?

I usually let them roam around my room and leave the lid off so they can get to their water but the temp in my room is falling and I always put them in their cage for winter but with the eggs should i just get another set-up for him? I mean I am 99% sure I should I am just looking for a way out of the expense. It's day 56 today.

i dont think so. you should by like a 10 dollar 32 qt tub and set up an incubator for your eggs. search it on youtube theres plenty of videos showing you how
Goood luck :)

So they piss and crap all over your floor?

"Getting it done" as in breeding? I think you should do a little more research on your ball pythons before getting into breeding. They do best in their own enclosures, and should never be left unattended in your room...

If theyve been doing what theyve been doing for eleven years then its working for them lol!

All that aside, getting the male a simple tub setup
For a couple of months shouldn't be too much to remove some risk during the incubation process.

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Originally Posted by Narcotheferret

My pair has lived together forever...Female 15 last march and male is 11. they have cohabited since the male was brought home. I have had them a few years got them from my old boss. So my question is while the female is doing her job is it OK to leave the male in the cage?

I usually let them roam around my room and leave the lid off so they can get to their water but the temp in my room is falling and I always put them in their cage for winter but with the eggs should i just get another set-up for him? I mean I am 99% sure I should I am just looking for a way out of the expense. It's day 56 today.

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Separate enclosures and please read a caresheet or two on how to maintain these animals.

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...s%29-Caresheet

If you can't afford them and you are 99% sure that what you're doing isn't the correct way to do things (bold lettering and italics added), sell them or give them away rather than bring additional animals into the world that you don't maintain or house properly, if that clutch proves viable based off what you've said thus far. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. I could live on McDonald's drive-thru for the rest of my life...it wouldn't be ideal and it certainly wouldn't be healthy and again, just because I can doesn't mean I should. That setup and how you're housing/"caring" for those animals isn't either (healthy or ideal) and I really hope you'll reconsider how you're keeping them. Just my two cents...

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Originally Posted by coldbloodaddict

So they piss and crap all over your floor?

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I cage them to feed them and leave them in til they relieve themselves. The 4 years I have had them I have never found poop in my room.

I had/have no intention to breed. It was a natural conception. My snakes are pets not ATM's like most peoples. Before moving to AZ (from Seattle) I had a regular poker game. One of the players was a herp-vet and in the year I knew him he never found a single thing wrong with my snakes. Always shed in one piece never any feeding issues no R-I not so much as a case of mites. So no offense but i don't need to read up on their care. There is more than one way to raise children...and pets. I just don't want to buy a whole extra set-up for the male when the eggs are due to hatch any day now.

I already found adopters for the babies, and i bought temp homes (tubs) for them to bring them home in and gave them all care-sheets weeks ago, I guess it cant hurt to buy the male his own stuff and just put them back together after the babies go to their new homes.

Sorry if i caused a ruckus from now on ill post specific questions and hope to just get the answer.

It probably wouldn't hurt anything to leave the male in with her. Some breeders leave the males in with the females until the females lay, just to be sure that they don't miss a breeding season, and it doesn't seem to harm anything.

But something to think about is that ball pythons are solitary in the wild, which is a good indicator that they would rather be alone in captivity too.

Nobody is trying to criticize you or say you are a bad pet owner. On the other hand, it's pretty unkind of you to imply that there's anything "unnatural" about breeding snakes on purpose, or that we care more about the money than we do the animals.

If you ask a question, be prepared to get answers you may not like. I learn new things about ball pythons every day, and I have been researching them for over three years now.

Just curious, if you had no intention or ever having the intention of breeding, why would you house two snakes together in the first place? :confusd:

It's generally not recommended to co-habit ball pythons together for reasons other than breeding. Even of the same gender.
There are too many cons to pros when housing two balls in the same enclosure. Can it be done? Yes, at times. Does that mean it's should be done? Not necessarily.