would you get a wc python?

i figured i would ask i just thought getting some wc balls would be a small chance to get some thing new but just thinking (i wouldn't even know where to get them lol)


p.s. for group of ppl that i ask about the cheap incubator i just got a helix its was easier.

Unless it was just drastically different from anything out there now. I don't have the time or the money to invest in a project that might not turn out. I think there are enough great CB animals available in the market now to satisfy any level of person in the hobby.

I voted no because I believe that whatever amount of money you would save would be more than offset by parasite treatment, feeding issues and vet bills. If you wanted females for breeding stock, normals are low enough cost from a breeder. I never plan to have more than a small collection and that's how I feel about it. If the next guy wants wc or ch, whatever floats your boat.

I voted no. There are so many quality breeders out there have CB animals for sale at very reasonable prices. I'd rather get a quality animal and not have to worry about any funky parasite or mites. Not that you can't get these from a breeder but the odds are greatly reduced.

CH/WC animals do give you a great opportunity to work with new genetics but unless its a snake that really calls to me I would prefer a CB animal.

thats what i was asking about i guess my question was asked wrong but like i would want to get a wc that had a trait that looked different idk i just see wc normals that look amazing and that have something i never seen in a cb like i seen a wc that has a strong green like haze over the whole snake for a pet. yea cb all the way but i think if i had that chance to get a group buy for a importer i would get it if the price was right cause its small but a chance you have a gene no one else does and i think that would make raising and dealing with wc problems if it had a trait that you really wanted to test.

I actually own 2 wc. I never intended on buying wc's..I was just "misinformed" :rolleyes: what they were when I purchased them.

They are now doing very well now...but I had a mess of a time with them. I couldn't get them to eat for 7 months..they were dehydrated..ticks...just all over bad health.

They are all cleaned up now and will be future breeders.

I would most def not reccomend getting a wc if you are new to the hobby. You will likely be in over your head. It can be quite overwhelming.

just sayin'

Excellent post, Meme! :)

Like Meme, my husband and I ended up with two adult WC female BP's - not by choice but through rescuing them. While they are worth the effort, it was like Meme said - very long, difficult, time consuming and a lot of worrying over them to get them anywhere near the health and weight that a breeding female needs.

Unless it was a very unique WC I wouldn't purposefully go out and purchase one and quite honestly most of the really unique ones aren't going to get into the hands of the average small breeder/hobbyist all that often. The folks importing out of Africa aren't dummies, they know when something is very different. I would bet that it gets directed to their contacts stateside and rarely just pops up available to most of us.

No thanks.
Wild caught is more of a hassle then I would want to deal with unless I had to rescue some.

I voted yes because I picked up a WC female about 2 months ago. Some kid had purchased her at a show, and was told that she was an import feeding on medium f/t weekly (yeah right). He brought her home and after a month of not being able to get her to eat, he posted her on Craigslist to try to get someone to take her and get her going again. So, I picked her up about 2 months ago and I echo what Meme said. She's proving to be a pain in my butt. She hasn't eaten yet since I got her. She was around 1700g when I got her, and I'm going to weigh her again this weekend to see if she's lost any significant weight (doesn't look like she has lost any), and if she has, I'm gonna try to find some ASFs in South Jersey...

I wouldnt want to deal with all the problems and the chance of infecting my existing collection with God knows what.

WC are for experienced people with patience, experience and a separate room to house them in, away from any other snakes IMO

I love w.c animals as long as they are something special worth taking from the wild, not just a normal.

We have bought and sold a LOT of cool w.c balls, everything from new morphs, existing morphs, specials, to just odd ball gravids, and have had great luck with them.

It really depends on how you approach acclimating them.
20 gallon tank with a heat light, aspen bedding, and handling = a animal that I can almost guarantee will not thrive.

A w.c animal set up in a rack system with appropriate size box ( 6 quart for 400 grams or less, 16 quart for 400-1000 grams, 28 quart 11-1800 grams, etc) and keep them dark and on cypress mulch with no handling they can do very well.

I have a group of about 20 w.c specials and morphs that I have had for 4-6 months and all but 1 eat live domestic rats every week just like a c.b animal does. It is all about how you keep them. When they come in worm them, and black knight the cage to kill the ticks (mites are not native to Africa) and leave them alone for 3 weeks and they should thrive!

If you get a w.c talk to someone who has experience with a good number of them, and has gotten them fresh, as pet store animals have been threw hell and back so are different than most reg. w.c. Don't handle them and set them up right, and you will have a great snake that is worth the xtra work!

I voted NO. I feel the w.c's are beyond my ability. It is like anything else, if you have the expertise it is not hard, some have that special touch that can make them thrive. Anyway there are SO many c.b. that you can pick and choose. I also don't have the time for a dinker project. I want to know what I am getting so all my time and money are spent towards my main goal....pastel albinos :D :D :D

I have two WC females. They were imported as gravids and sold when the buyer could not get them eating after the eggs were collected and hatched out.

They are alot of work, and have taken alot of patience.

I certainly do not regret it, and have no expectations on them to breed. If they do that would be great, as they are both really nice looking girls.

But at least I know they will not end up in a pet store to be purchased with a 250 gallon glass tank.

My only hope is that they will indeed thrive in captivity, they are already in captivity that cannot be changed.

One is eating, thanks to support I received from this forum, and VIA phone from Joanna.

Would I recommend them? Not really, but I think that is up to the keeper to decide if they have the supports and knowledge available to them. Also it would depend on the snake itself, mostly it's age. An older WC is going to be much harder to get eating and acclimating than a 500-800g snake.

Bruce

I voted no but I would buy a W/C in a heartbeat if it was something spectacular.

I have many captive hatched babies and will get more if I find them interesting enough. I have NEVER had mites or other parasite issues. I would only purchase CH animals from someone I trust. All of my CH animals act identical to CB babies.

I doubt I will ever get a WC animal. Unless it's some kind of morph. But the chances of me getting lucky enough to purchase a WC morph are pretty slim.

I purchased a wild caught adult male. I kept him for about two months. Got him treated for parasites and offered him every food every way I could. I took him to a friends house, who has 15+ years snake experience. He tried everything he could and he wasn't eating. He started force feeding the snake. It got to the point where all he had to do was put it in his mouth and he would eat. Then after one feeding he went in to check on him and he was curled up on the heat dead. The guy tried everything. It just wasn't meant to be.
There is always a gamble with w.c. snakes. Don't put into it if you can't afford to loose it.
Trey
That is him in my avatar.

i voted yes.i would buy a captive hatched again.as for a wild caught,no.it would be hard to tell if the snake was 5 years old or 10 or 15 near its death.

The only reason why I posted yes was because I have a big female that I got from a petstore that turned out to be a wild caught female. She had already been through an owner or two and had been treated medically, so I ended up with a big, healthy girl in the end who eats great. Will I ever buy a WC strictly for breeding purposes? No, I don't think that I would. There is enough of a genetic diversity in the captive BP population that wouldn't convince me that introducing more normal WC BP stock would benefit the bloodlines for anything more than an aesthetic appeal.

I think a lot of what goes into this decision is understanding the difference in terminology between CH (captive hatched), WC (wild caught) and LTC (long term captive). Unfortunately how you might define this, particularily LTC, isn't how a seller might define it so you need to get as much information on the snake as possible. I've seen adult BP's sold as LTC when they came over from Africa not 2 months ago. To me that just isn't "long term".

Most of the ball pythons that are shipped from Africa have been picked through, so if there were something special about it, it would have been held back. These holdbacks are sold to the highest bidder; for example, big breeders.

Support the U.S. breeders. What is the sense in breeding ball pythons is everyone is just going to buy wc or ch balls anyway.

Also most balls that come from Africa have either parasites or mites. If you buy from a respectable breeder, you will get a healthy ball that will have a much better chance at surviving than an import.

This is just my opinion, but I feel strongly about it. I for one will never buy an import.

I voted no... because a wc would be way more advanced for me...I do have a captive hatched ball python but that's a different story...since captive hatched bps are more readily to accept food...I know this is pythons but I did have a wc king snake once it ate since the second week I had it then it escaped.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by West Coast Jungle

I wouldnt want to deal with all the problems and the chance of infecting my existing collection with God knows what.

WC are for experienced people with patience, experience and a separate room to house them in, away from any other snakes IMO

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Great post, Raul!

I don't bother with WC. Not worth my time and effort to get them eating and acclimated.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wh00h0069

Most of the ball pythons that are shipped from Africa have been picked through, so if there were something special about it, it would have been held back. These holdbacks are sold to the highest bidder; for example, big breeders.

Support the U.S. breeders. What is the sense in breeding ball pythons is everyone is just going to buy wc or ch balls anyway.

Also most balls that come from Africa have either parasites or mites. If you buy from a respectable breeder, you will get a healthy ball that will have a much better chance at surviving than an import.

This is just my opinion, but I feel strongly about it. I for one will never buy an import.

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Unless the animal is a very high end new morph it will be sold to an importer along with 500 other balls, monitors, chameleons, etc. You cannot import just a morph ball and nothing else, as the exporters want you to take everything. When I buy special imports I get everything from aberrant, to yellow bellies, ghost, and new morphs, and they all come in with the reg. pet store animals.

The reason to but c.h or w.c is to get something different, and possibly new. You will never find some of these animals just showing up in captive production. If you are not conferable with w.c then go with c.h.

**The biggest misconception in importing balls : W.C Balls have mites/ Mites come from Africa. You will NEVER get a w.c ball with mites unless they are from animals here. Mites are not native to Africa, so w.c balls do not have them.

When we get a chance we will write up a little myth vs. truth on importing/ w.c balls as it seems to be a commonly discussed subject on here that a lot of people seem confused about.

Hope this helps clear a few things up.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jnjreptiles

Unless the animal is a very high end new morph it will be sold to an importer along with 500 other balls, monitors, chameleons, etc. You cannot import just a morph ball and nothing else, as the exporters want you to take everything. When I buy special imports I get everything from aberrant, to yellow bellies, ghost, and new morphs, and they all come in with the reg. pet store animals.

The reason to but c.h or w.c is to get something different, and possibly new. You will never find some of these animals just showing up in captive production. If you are not conferable with w.c then go with c.h.

**The biggest misconception in importing balls : W.C Balls have mites/ Mites come from Africa. You will NEVER get a w.c ball with mites unless they are from animals here. Mites are not native to Africa, so w.c balls do not have them.

When we get a chance we will write up a little myth vs. truth on importing/ w.c balls as it seems to be a commonly discussed subject on here that a lot of people seem confused about.

Hope this helps clear a few things up.

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That's some great insight that most people don't get to hear if they aren't on the "inside". Glad you could share it! :gj:

There are some awesome CH animals sold every day. Check them out! Maybe you find a gem and prove something new or maybe you just bring something nice to your selective breedings.

I voted NO, however, that is my stance now, and not 4 years ago. Here is my story.

I have a rack of 10 ball pythons that I bought as adults about 4 years ago ( acouple were picked up 3 years ago). Of the 10 animals, I know for sure that 1 was a LTC(literally long term, by at least 3 years when I got her) and 3 were misrepresnted as proven breeder LTCs (they were actually imported gravids that had just laid eggs). The remaining 6 are somewhere between WC and LTC. One of the WC females did not eat for 55 weeks, and was alot of headache. She finally started eating, and does great now. The rest of them ate pretty good from day one, but do have sporadic appetites, and will go on short fasts from time to time, or miss a meal every now and then for no apperent reason. 2 of the females that I got in as LTC had internal parasites, and were treated for them when we got them, and have been fine since then. @ of the other LTC came via the US Postal Service (in the box for 53 hours) and had more mites than I have ever seen on a snake in my life. They were quarantined and the mites were history within 20 days.

Well the above addressed the initial problems. Now I would like to discuss the purpose for buying these animals, and the lesson that can be learned by my own blood, sweat and tears. I bought these adults to attempt to jump start my breeding program (as many people do). Here is my take on that and the results that I have had. Do not buy adults in an attempt to speed up your breeding program, as it does not have a high probability of being any faster than raising babies. Here is how it went for me:
Female #1 - LTC and has laid eggs 3 years in a row (the best of the bunch)
Female #2 - LTC and waited 4 years to lay eggs (her first clutch was this year)
Female #3 - LTC and waited 3 years to lay eggs (her first clutch was this year)
Female #4 - yearling CH when we got her has laid eggs for the past 2 years
Female #5 - LTC laid eggs the last 2 years (actually this is the Bailey Clutch contest girl)
Female #6 - LTC that came in with mites and waited 2 years to lay eggs, dropped eggs last year and took this year off
Female #7 - LTC that came in with mites and waited 2 years to lay eggs, dropped eggs last year and took this year off
Female #8 - WC that came in with parasites and has yet to lay eggs (she did have big follicles this year but reabsorbed them)
Female #9 - WC that came in with parasites and laid her first clutch this year after 3 years
Female #10 - WC that came in with parasites and laid her first clutch this year after 3 years

So, to sum it up, it took me tons of patience, alot of treatments, heartache in the feeding department, and most of the girls took 3 years to acclimate before laying eggs. I could have paid less money for CH or CB babies, and had no treating to do and fed them slow and had eggs in the same amount of time. Sometimes what looks like saving time and money actually turns into no time savings and more money spent. I will not say that I regret what I have gone through, as it has earned me some valuable knowledge and husbandry skills, but I would highly recommend someone to prepare themselves before diving into the WC or LTC game.

I hope this helps,