Very interesting, and thank you for sharing! I did want to make one point about this poll. I would hazard a guess that MOST of the members here haven't been keeping ball pythons for very long, so "only" 27% of the respondents probably isn't an accurate representation of the life expectancy of our captive ball pythons.Originally Posted by Bundu Boy
Basically, the target audience of just this forum skews the results to the oldest being on the younger end (percentage-wise), simply because such a large number of our members (including myself) haven't been keeping ball pythons long enough to have any much older than 5 years. I've raised all but 2 or 3 of my animals from babies, and I got my first ball python in 2005. I do have a couple females that I acquired as adults who were pet store surrenders with no historical back-ground, so I don't know how old they were before they came into my collection.
This was also very interesting for me personally after listening to Tom Wolfe on Reptile Radio and his feeding methods (which was to pound food into his animals - basically feed them every time they were hungry), I was considering changing up my feeding methods for my girls that are in this year's breeding plans.
After reading this, I'm re-evaluating. I currently feed small rats to all of my adults, 1 a week. Even that may be too much if this LJ is any indication.
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