What do you do?

[sirhiss06]

I've read a bunch of different things about when to cool and how long to cool your ball pythons for the breeding season.

Here is my question to BP.net; What do you do? How long do you cool? When do you start/end cooling?

Personally:

I start October 1st. I drop my temps to 70 at night and bring them up to 85 during the day. I run a 12h/12h light/dark cycle.

On the 15th of November I start introducing my males with the females I've selected for them to breed with. I let males stay with the females for 3 days. Then I remove the males and give them a 3 day break. Every other time they get a 3 day break I offer them food (most refuse). I continue to introduce males until I get the desired response or until Ovulation happens.

Starting on the 1st of February I bring my temps back up during the evening about 5 degrees a week for the next 4 weeks. During this time I continue to pair males with females that have not Ovulated.

I continue to pair males with females until the last day of April. That is when my season ends. I remain on a 12h/12h light/dark cycle, the only difference is that my temps stay the same throughout the day.

This is more or less a compilation of what I've come up with throughout my experiences and research.

What do you do?

[Jay_Bunny]

I don't cool at all. I just start pairing up snakes around the end of September or beginning of October. I also do not change light cycles. Of course, I live in an area that experiences temperature change with the seasons, so the house automatically drops a few degrees during the fall and winter and the snake room has a skylight, which provides them with a natural shortening of days during the fall and winter.

[moravaguy]

well i have only breed once and im in the middle of maternal incubation.....but what i did was one day my buddy called me said he was paring and i said hell ill try to and they locked and i kept rotating the male around and boom i got 13 eggs, thats how i did it....