Ball Python or Corn Snake?

[bumblebee1028]

Thanks! My house stays at least 78F all year long, so hopefully it will work out well. I'll have a hygrometer in the tank, so that will be taken care of. Thanks for the snug hiding spot tips! I think I'll go cheap as the ball grows and then have some realistic decor whenever it's an adult. I am used to carefully monitoring the humidity, since I have a crestie and I had a beardie for 9 years - so I'm definitely ready for a snake. Do you think I should keep a 1' long baby into a 10g to start with or immediately jump it to a 20gL? Also, do you have a problem with females being egg bound? I wouldn't mind having a female, I'm just afraid of this. Both my crestie and beardie are/were males. One more question - you said that you waited 2 days after they ate before handling them. I'm wondering how the week thing works. My friend will feed his snake and then not touch him for a week, but I've heard of other people leaving snakes alone for a few days, feeding them, then leaving them alone for the rest of the week. So, how does that work?

Other than that,those are the rest of my questions. Thank you very much for covering so much to begin with!

You can use a 20 gallon long for a baby as long as it's VERY cluttered. I would cover the back and 2 sides with paper, and do two hides (snug fitting), water bowl, fake plants, other decorations, wads of paper, etc. If you can try blocking off a part of the tank somehow, that would probably be best (but make sure you never put tape in the enclosure!). Here's a pretty helpful thread about setting up a glass tank: http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...-With-Pictures!

I would definitely recommend setting up the tank before you get the snake, so you can get the husbandry absolutely perfect. We are using a homemade rack, and we set it up about a week before we got our ball pythons so that we could make sure that the temps, humidity, thermostat settings, etc. were right. You will probably only need a heat mat/under-tank-heater if your house is 78F+, and you definitely will need a thermostat to regulate it. You generally have to play around with the thermostat settings a bit to get the temps exactly right.

I personally do not have females, so I can't say from experience, but I have never heard of a female ball python becoming egg bound (or even cycling infertile eggs) if she's never been with a male. Female ball pythons do get a bit bigger than males, but not horribly so. You may want to keep that in mind, though - a female would require slightly larger housing than a male would once she's an adult.

We did a 5 day feeding schedule until our boys were about 500 grams. Now that they are all in the 500-700 gram range, we are doing feedings every 7 days. You can start a baby out on 5-day or 7-day feeding schedule. What we do is no handling on feeding day or for 48 hours after feeding. So when they were on a 5 day schedule, there were only 2 days that we handled them out of every 5 (does that make sense?). Now that they're bigger, we feed on Sunday nights, so we don't handle them on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday (but we do handle them Tuesday night). I like the 7 day schedule much more as it allows for more handling, but I also liked that they gained weight nicely when on the 5 day schedule. It's up to you, either way works. I should also add that if they don't eat, we avoid handling them until after they've eaten again. So for our one who's currently fasting, we're trying not to handle him a lot.

Someone else recommended a scale - if you don't already have a digital gram scale, I feel that it's well worth the investment! They're only about $25, and they are great for tracking weight. I measure after they poop, so I can track their "empty weight." It's definitely kept me from worrying about the boys and my beardies when it's hard to tell if they're gaining nicely.

None of ours have ever struck at us, but I have been hissed at occasionally when they're in shed and I'm misting them. They've all been really sweet, and when we have them out, they usually want to explore a bit, but for the most part they just sit there.

Sorry for such a long post, but I hope it helps!