Ball Python Care

Hello,

Recently (Last Monday) we (My girlfriend and I) purchased, a Ball Python.

(Monday was their feeding day)

When we purchased him he was not fed. We were told to wait two days, and try to feed him and we did, he did not eat on wed. We were also told that if he did not eat, wait until the next Monday and then try to feed him again.

So we have tried to feed him tonight, we are using a seperate bucket lined with towels. We thawed the mouse with warm-hotish water (tap-water hot) and then used a blow dryer on the mouse to heat it up.

We then used our feeding tongs, to dangle the mouse infront of him.. No dice.
We left the mouse in the bucket, and put the lid on and turned off the lights, once again.. Nothing..

I do understand that it is normal for ball pythons to not eat for long periods of time, but he is a juvenile, so we are concerned for him, and would like to make sure everything is alright.

Earlier we did notice a white film / crust on his nose, but it was not very visible, and we were unsure if that signified anything.

Currently, he is back in his cave on the heat side.

Do you have any suggestions for helping him regain his appetite or any ideas for what might be causing his lack of hunger.

Thanks,

- Darrin

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...ius)-Caresheet

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...Husbandry-FAQs

Check these out they will help you alot

Thank you for these links,

From what I have read it could be a number of things.

Would you suggest not moving him from the cage to his box, as one of those states that they do not become aggressive if you feed them in their cage.

I personally have always suspected that the temperature in his cage / the humidity is too low, but currently we do not have anything to measure this, we do have one of those heaters that stick to the underside of the cage, but it is not very big. I will try to obtain a digital thermometer today, if I can afford it. (Petland likes to jack their prices) (No we didnt get the snake from petland, it was from a reptile store that breeds them)

No, you don't have to move him to a different container to feed him. I personally feed my bp in her tank and I've never had a problem with aggression. Especially if you just got him recently and he might still feel a little insecure, picking him up and moving him into another new place could make him feel even less like eating. I would say just wait another week and try again. Eventually when he feels comfortable enough he'll eat.

Whatever heat pad you have should cover about 1/3 of the bottom of the tank, but depending on the size of your bp you could get away with a smaller one for now. If you need to raise the ambient temp an infrared heat bulb is always a good choice (although it does kill the humidity).

Oh, and you can get a digital thermometer much cheaper at someplace like Wal-mart or Lowe's ;)

We now have a digital thermometer / humidity monitor. At the moment it says 68F on the cold side, and 35% humidity. We will be putting some stuff to cover most of the mesh top (leaving a small part open) and spraying it once we know for sure what the readings are. Its only been in there about 10 minutes or so.

We will try your suggestion and just feed him in the tank, next monday.

I was noticing that your corn snake is named Jambi!! Thats pretty awesome, our ball has the same name!

After your thermometer normalizes you want to try to hit about 80 on the cool side and around 90-92 on the warm side. you want humiduty between 50 and 60 percent.

Yeah, if your cool temp stays around 68, you'll definitely need either an infrared heat bulb or a moonlight one to get it up to about 80 or so. Or you could get another heat mat for that side and a thermostat/rheostat to lower the temp, but I know what it's like to be low on funds, and a heat bulb is usually the cheapest way to go. You'll probably just have to mist more often.

But if your temps and humidity are good, then I'd just say he's still acclimating and to keep trying to feed him every week until he finally realizes he's hungry!

Haha thanks!! :D That is pretty awesome!! I thought I was the only one with that name!! :P Did you also get yours from the insanely awesome tool song or is it unrelated??

Well, the bank finally took my paycheck off hold so I got the funds, (Minus my dam speeding ticket >.< )

But yeah, (It's at my girlfriends house) she was saying that the temperature is still in the low 70's so thats pretty bad. But we misted last night so his humidity is getting higher. I will go take a look for a thermostat / rheostat. I was looking at petland / petsmart yesterday and they had such a small selection for reptile supplies. It was pathetic.

Thankfully the place where we purchased our snake will be open today, so we will head over there and see if they have anything better (They are a dedicated reptile store)

Yeah, I've been a huge Tool fan for years, and have never grown bored of their music haha. I went and saw em this summer, was a pretty intense concert. If you check out their website there is some stuff hinting that they're in the beginning stages of recording the new album.. I'm PUMPED! lol. You can also see a pic of Carey's insane synth.. ITS EPIC!

Anyways, we will try to figure something out to get our snake warm and happy, I hate to think that hes been sitting in cruddy temperatures for the past week.

Same here. Tool is such an amazing band!! And I'm so jealous that you've seen them live!! Definitely next time they go on tour, I'm there!! Yeah, I heard they were writing a new album, can't wait to hear it and sometimes I wish they wouldn't wait so long between albums... although it's always worth the wait!

But anyway, before I get completely off topic haha :oops: If your bp has pretty much been staying on his hot side, then you probably don't have to worry that the other temps are too cold. I'm sure he's been staying warm enough. Just get the other heat mat and thermostat as soon as you can and I'm sure he'll be fine :)

I will definitely look into that. I am also going to check and see if the heatmat is even holding still. I remember that the guy at our reptile store, was telling us to use duct tape or something to hold the mat in place (Cause you can never remove it after you apply it) and we didnt have anything so we used masking tape, which I doubt holds up very well when heated.

I'll look into quite a few details, and hope that we can find a solution soon. I know he is prob fine atm, but I would like to ensure the health and longevity of our snake.

God knows I failed with fish. >.<

Oh yeah that could be a problem. Masking tape is no good for that sort of thing. Aluminum or foil tape (which you can get at Lowes or Home Depot) is actually the best, as it conducts heat much better than duct tape.

So we have added an infrared heatlamp.. We could not find a thermostat and a rheostat was 50 bucks... I highly doubt that is a reasonable price, but I havent taken a good look. We also added a second digital thermometer that is probed right into the heated cave, the other one is outside on the cool side.

The reading on the digital one is 90.1 F in side the cave, (I has been gradually going up, we added it about 2 hours ago)

Should I do something to prevent this from going up any further, or will our snake know that it is too hot and switch sides?
The cool side says 73.6 F but it does not have a probe thing, it is just an open air thermometer and hygrometer.

What do you guys suggest?

I was thinking we could maybe aim the infrared bulb more towards the cool side, as it isnt directly on the mesh of the tank. It is about 3-4" above it.

If a rheostat or thermostat is absolutely necessary, do you guys have any suggested ones, or links to a Canadian reptile website that would sell then for a reasonable price?

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Originally Posted by DarrinLowe

Thank you for these links,

From what I have read it could be a number of things.

Would you suggest not moving him from the cage to his box, as one of those states that they do not become aggressive if you feed them in their cage.

I personally have always suspected that the temperature in his cage / the humidity is too low, but currently we do not have anything to measure this, we do have one of those heaters that stick to the underside of the cage, but it is not very big. I will try to obtain a digital thermometer today, if I can afford it. (Petland likes to jack their prices) (No we didnt get the snake from petland, it was from a reptile store that breeds them)

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try to pick up an inexpensive hygrometer... like at petsmart or petco $6.00 it will tell you the humidity. i hear digital is the best but can be expensive. maybe amazon? or search prices online is what i do. the humidity is SO important. needs to be around 50%. when digesting food and shedding, it needs to be 70-80%. this helps with the shedding process and helps very much w/the digestion after eating. temperature and humidity are very important. good luck : )

We do have a hygrometer, built into our cool side thermometer. When we added our infrared heat lamp, it was aimed directly at the heated side cave, and the humidity went down to about 45%, but I moved it a little to the middle as our cool side was only 75 F and the heated side was going up to 90F really fast, since moving it the humidity is back up at 50 (It is aimed at the water dish)

Yup, thermostats are expensive. Fifty bucks is about the average price unfortunately :( Not sure if you use Amazon or not, but if you type in rheostat in the search it should pull up a zoo med rheostat for $20 and a 500R thermostat for $30. Either of those should work fine if you need them. The main difference between the two is that a rheostat is just essentially a "dimmer" and with a thermostat you can fine tune the temp.

What size infrared bulb did you get? And how big is your tank? I usually only use a 40 or 50 watt bulb and I have a 50 gallon tank, and it works fine. Yeah, definitely put your heat bulb over the cool side. If you already have a heat pad for the warm side then you don't need anything more than that haha The heat bulb will get your cool side/ambient temps up in no time.

Are you providing any belly heat, or is all your heat from lamps?

If all your heat is from lamps, you are going to be fighting humidity all the time. I ditched my glass tank and the lamps (thank goodness) for a tub with belly heat.

Temps and humidity were excellent and care was pain free. Additionally, belly heat aids in digestion. And ball pythons don't require special lighting, since they are nocturnal animals.

Most of my animals would NOT eat if I transferred them to a different enclosure for feeding. I feed over 50 ball pythons weekly in their enclosures, and have no issues with them being aggressive when it's not feeding day. I like the aggressive eagerness to eat on feeding day though! :)

We do have a heat pad attached to the underside of the tank. That was providing our initial heat before we noticed that it was too low.

The bulb is 50W, and the holder supports up to 75W. So I think everything is alright there.

But yeah, everything seems fairly okay. My main concern is mediating the heat, but I guess my only real options are a rheostat, or thermostat.

I work all day, and my girlfriend is at school while I work so there is a 7 hour period where we have to turn the lamp off, because we are not sure how high the heat is going to go.

ATM I am down to the last of my pay check, (Thank you Calgary Police) so I cannot afford a thermostat or rheostat. But we will try to arrange something as soon as possible.

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0.1 fancy normal ball "Karma"
1.2 corns - bloodred "Jambi", creamsicle okeetee "Aurora", snow "Luna"
1.0 striped california king "Nyx"
0.1 orange tiger crested gecko "Ember"

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What do those numbers mean, is that like... 0 females . 1 male? or age...? lol.

I've been really curious about that, everyone seems to have them.

It refers to the sex of the animal. If a number is on the right side of the . it's how many females they have, and to the left is male. And then sometimes there's a third number like 2.3.1 and that would be an animal that is unsexed. So 2.3.1 would mean 2 males, 3 females and 1 unknown.

I know, it's kinda confusing at first haha ;)

Okay,

Well we did purchase a thermostat last night, I have not set it up yet.

We managed to find a brown hopper (as we told they might be more likely to eat a brown one) we heated it up, cut its skull, and put it in front of his cave, and left it over night. No dice.

he sniffed it, and checked it out for a bit, then trolled back into his cave.

Any suggestions?
Id like to veer away from "assist feeding" or us it as a last option.

Should I be taking his cave out, or putting it further from the cave (It was right infront of the entrance)

I know we've only had him a few days over a week, but we purchased him on his feeding day, and they hadnt fed him yet, so hes gone two weeks without eating.

Two weeks is really not a big deal. If I were you I would spend the next week focusing on trying to get the temps and humidity to a good stable sustainable point then try feeding again on the next scheduled feeding day.

We have installed the thermostat, so his temperature is mediating between 85-88F in his warm cave. We will both keep a good eye on the humidity levels, although I do think the device we are using to measure humidity is crap. (I sprayed his cage with 3 sprays, humidity stayed at 44.. >.<) So I will attempt to find something better. Other than that, are there any other suggestions for helping him adjust to the new home?

I was reading some people black out 3 windows on their cages, is this useful or what is the intention of it?

Hmm, I dont know if we are allowed to edit our posts, I couldnt find an option.

I was looking around and I found this.
Digital Wireless Thermometer-Hygrometer
BIOS WEATHER

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http://www.rona.ca/shop/~digital-wir...s-weather_shop

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It says that it has up to 3 sensors, and I was curious. Does this mean that the sensors are wireless? I think this would be incredibly useful, cause we would not need to buy a new thermometer for our cooling area, we could monitor heat/humidity in the cold/hot hides, aswell with the open areas.

It's a fairly decent price too..

Echoo. cho.. oo. o. o . .

So, it is getting fairly close to our feeding day and I just wanted to review some of the steps that will help our BP feed, as he is only a jeuvinile, and hasnt eaten since we got him.

His temperatures have been stable between 86 and 89 in the hotspot. 77 in the cool.

Feed him in his cage -

Should I take the cave out to wake him?

Dangle his food -

Do I dangle it by the tail, or hold the inner body? (In some videos I saw people holding the inner body to make it look like the face was moving, but hoppers are very small)

Turn off the lights for 3 hours before hand

Cut skull to expose flesh ?

Are any of these unreasonable, or unnecessary. I definitely do not want to assist feed. Unless ABSOLUTELY necessary.