A Pairing Question

[Matt K]

Hello! So I put my first pair of Ball Pythons together a couple days ago. I haven't yet noticed any form of copulation (which I'm not worried about, haha), but, I did have a question. Both times I've introduced the male, there were urates and feces in the cage the next day. It even seems like the male is "urinating" on the female, as she has some dried urate staining bits of her body. Is this normal? And if it is, is it a good sign? I don't know if this indicates stress, or whether or not it might be part of courting. Thanks a lot for any help ahead of time--as always, it's greatly appreciated!

Cheers,
-Matt

[Matt K]

Bump, haha.

Cheers,
-Matt

[dturner100]

It may not be urates. Depending on how your female reacts to the males presence at first she may pace the tub excreting, and tail wagging. This can be a pink, or white tinted sometimes chunky fluid.

It could also be chunks of sperm from your male.

If you use newspaper for bedding they leave traces of what most likely happend in the tub. If you see red-ish streaks around the cage then the female wasn't very happy. As well the male may not have inverted his pene/penes directly after copulation.

This isn't an exact science but newspaper can give you a clue as to why there are certain fluid, or chunks on your female, or tell you that you MAY have missed the copulation.

Hope this helps.