First off I would like to say this site is awsome. It has been a wonderful learning experience in just the 2 days of finding this site. I have had my Balls for about 12 years now. Maybe longer. My snakes seem happy, but after reading the caresheet I plan on making some changes. I keep my male and female in the same cage that I built, and everything seems gravy. Although I only have one hidebox and I'm using a heatrock. As I said I plan on makeing changes so don't get upset just yet. My babies have been through alot in the breaf stent they were not with me about 8 years ago. I recieved them back with mites, no water, and really skinny. All is well now though and they are happy from what I can tell. The few questions I have are relativly simple, but I want to confirm them with the folks who know more than I.

The cage I have built is huge, and on the cold side. I plan on rebuilding their cage to a smaller dimention. I know most of you do not condone keeping male and female snakes together, but these two have been together for so long I do not want to spit them up unless for furture breeding purposes. So the question is would the cage size recomendation of 36"x18"x12" be adiquate for these two full grown Balls?

My babies are also picky eaters. They only eat mice. I feed them on average 5 mice/every 2 weeks or so. I know they need to be on a scedual, but they are not in the wild so I am not on a set scedual yet. I will try to get them on one. My snakes are not fat. They used to be when I first had them. I was feeding them every week 2 or 3 mice and I was seeing skinn between scales ar one point. After getting them back from the stent away from me, (longer story), they were skinny. Really Skinny. Now they are at a healthy weight I think. I will post pictures as soon as I can and figur out how to do it on this board. I said they only eat mice, because when I did try to feed a rat pup the snakes struck the rat and imediately released. Didn;'t constrict or attempt to kill it after. What I think is they do not like the course fur of the rats, and prefure the soft fur of a mouse. I have heard of that happening with people who feed their snakes hamsters. Hamsters have even softer fur and snakes get spoiled after a few meels on hamsters. So does it sound ok if I continue feeding the 4 to 5 mice when I feed them. and those guys stop when they are full sometimes the female only eats 3 and I feed the rest to the male since I buy 8 to 10 at a time. Sometimes I have to return extra mice, but thats not to often.

I know this is getting long, but bare with me please.

Now I have been reading and come across the different "morphs". I think my female is a cinnomon pastel. Atleast she looks that color compaired to the pictures on here. I will post pictures for everyone elses opinion. My male is a normal for sure. What classifies a ball to be a pastel?

As I stated earlier these babies have been together for about 10 years now always in the same cage and always together. Even when she was sitting on eggs. She has laid them about 4 or 5 time that I can remember. I haven't had any sucess hatching, but I know the conditions are not correct for the eggs. I will be building an incubater for this next clutch. I cut open one of the dead eggs one time she laid them. It was a few years ago, but if my memory serves me properly the egg I opened had a baby in it that looked like a pieball. I contributed it to the baby not being mature, but aparently that was not the case. Is it possible to get pieballs from a cinnomon pastel female and a male normal? I will try to get pictures up tomorrow after I get home from school (Bio 2 lab), and I am at work right now. Thanks for the info and I look forward to chatting with the breeders on here. I think I will be getting into balls more heavily in the coming years.

Oh one more questions to this already long thread. Why do many people keep snakes in a plastic tote that the beauty of these creatures cannot be appreciated? I understand keeping babies for sale in the shoebox type storage housings, but every snake? I'm just curious and was wondering this. I'm not new to Balls, but I am still extremely green about them. I didn't do my homework on these babies like I did with my orchids, but I am going to fix that. Thanks everyone!!

Josh