So I've decided I want to breed ball pythons for fun and profit (mostly the former, but if the latter happens all the better) but I'm a relative newbie to pythons and snakes in general. I've kept various reptiles for the past twenty years (less impressive when you realize I'm 25) but only got my female ball python about eighteen months ago. I got her from a Petsmart shortly after starting work at one (I know, boo! hiss!) so I'm unsure of her exact age, but I this will probably be her second winter, as she was hatchling-sized when I got her.

I am not really seriously considering breeding her; my male which I recently acquired (pinstripe) is only 120 grams or so, so he is not ready, and while I've been entertaining the idea of acquiring a breeding aged male, I would only attempt to breed her if I knew it would be safe for her.

Which comes to my question. She is currently ~1200 grams and approximately 42 inches long, eating medium rats (I bought them as medium, they actually seem large to me - certainly they are much bigger than the medium rats Petsmart sells as feeders!) once a week. I've read that in order to breed them they must be various 1200 or 1500 or 1800 grams; since she was a pet first I certainly want to err on the safe side, and my general impression is that while they might be fertile at 1200 grams it can be dangerous to conceive. However, most of the guides I've read say to start introducing males November 1st - so should she be 1500 (or 1800)+ grams as of November 1st? If, say, she hits the benchmark (whichever one), say, January 1st, would it be safe to introduce a male to her just in case she ovulates?

I don't want to power feed her, obviously, but I'm also wondering, should I be feeding her more often if I was trying to prep her for breeding? Honestly I'm not sure if she would eat any more, as my usual gauge of if she is hungry is if she starts stalking around her tank exploring, and she very rarely does that before say five days after feeding. She usually spends the first five days after feeding plopped in either her hot or cool hide (sometimes alternating) or occasionally basking under the ceramic heating emitter.

As long as I'm posting this might as well ask another question. I'm hoping my male pinstripe will be in fighting form next season, and so I want to make sure he's nice and plump. He recently went into a shed cycle and I initially wasn't going to feed him, but then my beardies refused their monthly pinky and fuzzy, respectively, so I plopped them in his enclosure, rather than throwing them out, and he gobbled them up forthwith. So five days later I decided to try feeding him again with his normal large adult mouse even though his shed was still ongoing. He refused it while I dangled it, but when I plopped it down in his enclosure again overnight he ate it too. Should I keep offering him food during his shed like this, or will it stress him out? I always used to offer my female food while she was shedding, but she also struck it and took it greedily, so I wasn't too worried. He seems more hesitant but is still feeding, I just don't want to freak him out by harassing him while he is shedding.