Keeping BPs Together???

[dr del]

A rehash of a rehash that has been rehashed countless times. While counseling inexperienced keepers on the risks of co-habitating certain species is fine, doling out husbandry recommendations for "reptiles even of the same species" is not. Especially when you have no experience with those species. At least Gale did the correct thing and limited her advice to ball pythons and beginning keepers. She's was right to express caution.

To anyone else who would try to counsel husbandry advice with a blanket brush to cover all snakes: Ever tried to breed thrasops, pseustes, philodryas spp. or spilotes without cohabitating them? These species are well nigh impossible to breed unless cohabitated together year round. Given the proper space and in the care of experienced keepers, many species do wonderfully cohabitated together. They feed fine, crap fine and breed fine. In decades of cohabitating species not prone to ophiophagy, I have never had a case of spontaneous illness break out, nor have I had one mate decide to lunch on the other, nor have I ever had two snakes fight over the same spot.

OP:

Having said that, keep your ball pythons in separate tupperware bins. It's actually more expensive and more work to cohabitate two snakes in a way that provides for all their needs.

Please also remember:

1. Feed your snakes on a silk doily so that they don't ingest substrate when eating. Although no one can really cite a necropsy backed reason to do this, 8 out of 10 people who have owned a snake for less than a year seem worried about substrate ingestion, so you should be too.

2. Keep the hot spot at exactly 90-92 degrees and the cool end at 77 to 80. Ball pythons in the wild are not exposed to temperature variations outside of this range.

3. Provide realistic belly heat like they would get in a termite mound. All termite mounds in Africa are made by termites sponsored by Calorique.

4. Feed them a domestic rat or mouse diet like they would get in the wild. Ignore that studies have shown that the majority of their diet is avian and that they have to climb to get it.

5. Pine substrate has not been proven to be harmful to snakes, but a bunch of people who have never used it claim it is even though they cannot point out one health related instance to one snake. Go with the rest of the sheep and claim an issue with something you've never had an issue with based on the word of someone else who has never had an issue with it.

6. Mercilessly mist and moisten your tupperware tub so that the humidity stays at 70% and mold and bacteria become an issue. Forget that it is much healthier and beneficial to construct humid hides.

7. Make sure that two male ball pythons never make eye contact or a battle for the dominant alpha ball position in the pack may break out.

8. Keep in mind that many of the food related morphs are tastier to non-food related morphs. If you try to breed a chocolate to a fire, expect one of those oh-so-often incidents of ball python cannibalism that we ALWAYS never hear about.

Most importantly, gain experience by reading, not by actually experiencing any of the techniques or advice you are giving out. Rehash and regurge all of the crap you read on forums like this so that a new generation of herpers cannot learn from your lack of experience. Understand that there is only one way to do things and that is the way the herd tells you to do things. Anything outside of that is taboo and you will get negative rep points for applying logic and actual experience to these discussions.

Hope that helps!

**sigh**

Says BP's right there in the thread title.

We all know this is the BP keeping paddling pool - it's designed to be.

Do you honestly think the best advice we can give in this instance is "maybe but it's complicated and you will have to know a bit more to avoid problems"? We do have to give some kind of answer after all every time the question gets asked without really knowing the members level of experience.

Or have I just been up too long and taking things too seriously again?

I hate 4am.


dr del