Daughter and My 1st Snake

[BillinIndiana]

Night 2 : Avalon's Red/Night light has been on and she is the most active we have seen her. She is all over her tank exploring. We have the suction cup artificial vines on the back wall, she gets in them and climbs to the top of her cage.
Hope all this movement doesn't mean she is hungry. The vendor said she ate Weds. so we were going to wait till this coming Weds. to offer her a f/t mouse.
Should we keep her on the schedule he had her on?

[Kaorte]

Night 2 : Avalon's Red/Night light has been on and she is the most active we have seen her. She is all over her tank exploring. We have the suction cup artificial vines on the back wall, she gets in them and climbs to the top of her cage.
Hope all this movement doesn't mean she is hungry. The vendor said she ate Weds. so we were going to wait till this coming Weds. to offer her a f/t mouse.
Should we keep her on the schedule he had her on?

Sounds like normal new ball python behavior. She is probably testing the limits of her enclosure and looking for a possible escape route. She isn't quite certain if her new digs are safe or not She will settle in eventually and won't be so overly active.

I would wait one week from the day you got her before you try feeding. What this does is give the snake time to adjust to its new surroundings, and the extra time also makes them a little more hungry and willing to eat for you.

As for what day to feed on, it doesn't really matter. Pick a day that works with your schedule and you can stick to.

[BillinIndiana]

Night 3 : After most of the day in her hide she came out today and did some more exploring.. The Day light is still on and she is roaming all over her cage again. Temps are 83 ambient, according to the thermometer on the back wall. It's 90 on the floor of the hot side according to the thermostat.. I didn't check the cool with the temp gun before I started typing this, I will in a minute

Oh yeah, the Humidity is still at 49%,

[jfaria1891]

props to the person on the first page the wrote the post about the addiction. spot on! im sitting here reading it like omg hes talking about me, got my first bp not even a year ago and now i have a rack system thats full already and im making more racks for the new additions, i spend countless hours up at night reading the fourms playing with the genetics calc looking up average prices. i think i have done so much research i know more about bp's then i do about myself XD

it really is an amazing hobby tho with a great community and there such amazing awesome animals. so like he said welcome to the club! lol

Paper towels or News paper as a substrate all the way, pull it out wipe the tank down with some antibacterial soap and water on a paper towel dry it with another paper towel lay down a new layer and presto cleaned in under 5 mins! that carpet stuff is seriously a major pain ans starts to fray and fall apart and no good man. almost all breeders use newspaper or paper towel because when u have that many snakes u want the fastest easiest clean up because ull be doing it often XD

and yes pee like once a week poop like once a month is the norm but it varies as with anything. WARNING to you tho bp's eat rodents .... so you can imagine what there business smells like... it dont smell all that good going in never mind coming out, it goes away with a simply cleaning but when she has gone ... ull know.

i would suggest getting a scale that weight in grams if you dont already have one just to know her weight and in case she ever stops eating u can make sure shes not loosing weight, or just to weigh her food for whatever reason sometimes it helps to know what there meal weighs.
*** not set in stone by any means *** but i like using this chart as a basic idea http://www.ballpythonz.net/feeding.html IMO you never have to feed a bp anything larger then a medium rat theres no reason for them to hit 3000 grams there's a point where they don't get longer and just keep getting fatter lol


anyways shes a beaut and you will eventually have a rack and be breeding... give it time haha and theres no question this amazing bp community wont answer so just ask !


0.1 spider
1.0 pastel
0.2 Normal

[BillinIndiana]

Thanks for the reply,
As far as the carpet goes, hey it's only one snake and I'm on Disablity ( need new hips ) and am home all the time. So it isn't really that much of a problem for me to clean and change it out. We bought two of them just for that reason. If or when they start wearing out, I'll probably switch to the Aspen. We have her set-up in my Daughter's room, we tried to set it up so it's nice to look at also.

If we ever get into where we have a Lot of snakes or we're breeding, I would probably go paper all the way. In fact, there is a printing company that I can get the "tail-end" of the big newspaper rolls from for free. It's about 3 miles from our house. They gave me a couple to practice airbrushing on last winter.. I bet they each had over 100 yards left on them.. So if it gets to that point we have a source!

We also have a scale I picked up off E-bay for like $10.. It goes up to 11 lbs and can weigh in grams. We have not weighed her yet. We just brought her home and placed her in the cage. We haven't been handling her, but the next time we get her out I plan on weighing her then.

I bought 36 Mice when I bought her, that is what the Vendor at the show was feeder her. I was hoping that those will last her till they are gone and then maybe move up.. I guess we could always try and feed her two if she gets too big for them..?

[jfaria1891]

mice = 13-20grams
Rat pups = 20-30grams
weaned rats = 30-45grams

so doubling on mice would be the same as a weaned rat and feeding mice every 4-5 days rather then 7 days would be the same as a rat pup.

it doesn't matter weather u feed mice or rats all the matters is the meal weight its just cheaper to feed rats then like 8 mice at a time when they get big.

[BillinIndiana]

Thanks for the info.. About how much should she weigh in say 4 months? We were told that she is two months old right now.. She looks long too me, but I haven't a clue how to judge age. All I know is when she was in my hand coiled up she was maybe a 3 inch diameter circle.

[jfaria1891]

My guess would be about 500 but its just a very rough estimate every snake is different

[Rawbbeh]

props to the person on the first page the wrote the post about the addiction. spot on! im sitting here reading it like omg hes talking about me, got my first bp not even a year ago and now i have a rack system thats full already and im making more racks for the new additions, i spend countless hours up at night reading the fourms playing with the genetics calc looking up average prices. i think i have done so much research i know more about bp's then i do about myself XD

it really is an amazing hobby tho with a great community and there such amazing awesome animals. so like he said welcome to the club! lol

Hah! That would be me.

I only said it because...well I was describing myself. There have been a few nights when I've gone to bed only to find myself thinking about "what if I bred a sterling that I produce with.....XYZbuttercupmorph" So...that...causing a slight increase in adrenaline to see pictures and the probabilities of what the possibly combinations would be...I have to reach over and grab my laptop and quench that IMMEDIATE desire for knowledge. I got one Ball Python (a female pastel) by luck in the sense that I really just bought what I thought looked cool that was in my price range. She was super yellow and it just jumped out at me. Little did I know that that one purchase was a great starter to moving on to bigger and better. Now less than a year later I have a male Pewter and I'm ready to make some sterlings...and then some pewter bees as my next purchase will be a female bumblebee....

Oh lord...here I go again....

SEE WHAT THESE DAMN THINGS DO TO US!?!??!?!?! RUN!!! RUN AWAY WHILE YOU STILL HAVE MONEY IN YOUR CHECKING ACCOUNT!!!!


....AND YOUR CREDIT CARDS AREN'T MAXED OUT!!!!


...........AND YOU HAVEN'T GOTTEN PAYDAY ADVANCES!!!!!


.....................AND BEFORE YOU LIE ON YOUR INCOME TAX RETURNS TO GET MORE MONEY TO BUY MORE BALLS WITH!!!


/dies.

[CDs Ball Pythons]

Very cool, and I'll agree with the others: You can't have just one.

Trust me, I had one, and now I have almost 25.