Caring for bps

[toyota89]

How often do you guy and girls clean, feed, water and otherwise care for your snakes?

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[The Serpent Merchant]

I feed young ball pythons (less than 600 grams) every 4 days, I feed BP's larger than 600 grams every 8 days.

I clean my snakes cages as soon as I notice that they are dirty, and I do a heavy cleaning of all of my cages every once per month.

I replace the water in my snake cages every 4 days or if a dish is empty.

Besides food and water I care for my snakes on an as needed basis.

[toyota89]

Thanks everywhere you look tells you something different.

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[RoseyReps]

I feed my snakes every 5 days for the ones under 5-600g. Over that is every 7 days.

Cleaning is done as a daily check for deification / urates / shed (spot cleaning) and once a month full clean / cage sanitize.

I top off water every morning and do a full replacement + scrub every 4-5 days.

Aside from that, daily monitoring of temps / humidity. If one is starting the shed cycle I start the once or twice a day misting. (For the ones in tanks)

Weekly weigh-ins the day before they are fed.

Play time (more for me than the snake. They just tolerate it )

[toyota89]

Thanks for the info.

I think I will feed my balls less then 600 grams on Tuesdays and Fridays. I will feed my larger snakes every Friday.

Spot clean everyday and clean tubs once a month.

Fill water dishes everyday and clean every Friday.

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[BHReptiles]

I feed my ball pythons every 3 days right now (I'm trying to use up my rat pups before buying any frozen weanlings, so since my babies have outgrown pups, they are fed more often). However, once I get some rat weanlings, they will be fed every 5 days and once they are on small rats, they will go to a 7 day schedule.

I change water every 1-2 days. I don't fill my bowls up all the way, so I have to make sure the water is pretty fresh.

As for cleaning, I check on my ball pythons at least 2-3x daily and clean up when I see a mess. When I clean up messes, I wipe down with F10 and then once a month I do deep cleaning of the tubs to make sure that nothing can grow in there.

I also handle all my snakes when I feel like it/have time. Like yesterday, my normal ball python female watched Once Upon a Time (TV show) with me. She just curled up next to me and used my blanket as a hide.

You'll find everyone has a different routine. As long as your animals are clean, fed, and watered, it doesn't really matter how you go about doing it. There's a lot of variation and you should do what works for you.

[toyota89]

Can you over feed a ball python? I got a 2300 gram female last Thursday and fed her at 190 gram rat when I got home with her. I'm tempted to feed her again today. The guy who had her fed her every 3 to 4 weeks depending on how big the rat was.

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[3skulls]

Awhile back I was watching a show on PBS about pythons. It really wasn't about BP but just pythons in general. They were talking about a condition (I can't remember the term) were a python can over eat. It would stretch there insides to far and cause them to go off feed. It's going to drive me nuts now.
A BP can also become obese.

[jschwe]

You can definitely overfeed them--and some of them will take it. We have one roughly 1000g girl that would take two to three rats a day if I gave them to her. They can get fat, though, and some balls will also slow start to refuse meals if they get too many. I've had a couple of males do this, especially when they're already full sized like your girl is. Basically, unless you are breeding her, there is no need to give a full grown girl more than a decent sized rat a week. They don't burn all that much energy on a daily basis, and when she's not growing or building eggs there's really nowhere for her to put it. (Note that even if you are breeding her, 2300g is a decent size, and you still wouldn't really have reason to feed her any extra). The only time we feed ours more than one a week is when one of our babies doesn't eat and we have leftovers.

[toyota89]

OK thanks I will wait to feed her Friday.

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