First time owner?

[Reinz]

Welcome to Forum Oopslala.

I very reluctantly inherited my Ball when my daughter went off to college.

My only instructions were to give him a rat every week or two.

I did more stupid, ignorant things than I care to admit. However this just caused me to bond with him. Bond with a reptile? Yes I did.

I finally got smart and learned about care on the internet and eventually found this forum.

Now that I have the knowledge, and am still learning, I find Ball Pythons amazing, beautiful, gentle creatures. I would recommend them to anyone as a first snake.

You are smart doing your research first, thus, way ahead of the curve.

Have fun with your new venture.

[Reinz]

To address the dog issue. I have two lage dogs myself, and a cat.

Since you have acknowledged this already, I'm sure you will be very cognizant of lockup.

After one careless episode on my part, I now triple check the doors every time I'm in the room. For I know that I can get distracted and forget. And these snakes like all snakes are truly escape artists.

I do let the dogs and the cat come in the room with me now. And the door to the room is always open now. So now there no longer that curiosity and dying need for them all wanting to get into that room.
They only want to go in when I go in.
I feel that this is safer and less stress for the snake, at least in my situation.

So far I have only introduced the snake to my youngest, most gentle dog. It is rare that the two dogs are alone. I was very guarded and it went well.

At some point I will try the other dog all alone.

The cat could care less. She just walks on by.

I think the key is to take things slow.

[JackTar]

If it's a secure enclosure, there should be no problem. I have heard of owners coming home after a night out partying, taking their snake out and falling asleep while hanging out with their snake and wake up to a missing snake. Ball Pythons are great couch potato, tv watching buddies so it's easy to get real relaxed while hanging out with your snake.

[tbowman]

I have a German Shepherd and a Rhodesian Ridgeback and haven't had any trouble with them in regards to my snakes. The worst thing that my Rhodesian did when I was handling one of my BPs, was lick it.

I do have PVC enclosures that have glass sliding doors so the only way my snakes are getting out is if I forget to close them.

Depending on the size of the snake, that may not always be true. My Burm will figure out how to open the sliding doors if they're unlocked. I don't think this would ever be a problem with a BP or Cornsnake though.

[trailblazer295]

I use PVC snake cages with hinged front door that come with keys to lock it. As long as you don't forget to lock it he can't get out.

[earthwormjim]

I use a glass tank. If you decide to use glass, set it up a couple weeks before you get your snake. It allows you to fine tune your humidity and temps. I have a 20 gallon tank, I use cypress mulch because it helps with humidity, two hides, a grapewood stump, large water bowl, for heating i have an under tank heater that covers a third of the bottom on a dimmer switch, I would strongly suggest a thermostat though, i have a lamp with a red bulb also on a dimmer switch, it has a screen lid with locks. I have two digital thermometers on each end for ambient temps and a probe thermometer under the substrate above the UTH, as well as a humidity probe in the middle of the tank. Humidity is an issue with the screen lid, I took a piece of cardboard and cut it to fit the lid, I cut a large hole in it for some ventilation and to fit the lamp, also a few more tiny holes for ventilation. I wrapped it in tinfoil after. This helps hold in humidity and keep ambient temps level.

As far as the snake I have a ball python, I would reccomend one for your first. Mine is super friendly, loves being held and just chilling. Hope this helps!

[oopslala]

I can gladly say I've learned quite a bit about ball pythons in the past few days, but there are still a few questions that I'm not able to find without digging deep here, or the net.

Posting reply here in hopes of someone knowing the answer to help prevent spamming with new threads constantly.

What is the difference between a baby snake and a well started snake weight wise?

When you look online at websites that sell snakes, is the image that goes along with the kind of morph/gender the exact snake you get, or do they just put a good looking snake on there and send you one you haven't seen?

Also a random question, that may play into which snake I get right now. What snakes can be bred to pied ball pythons, and still have the pied ball trait show?

[srp1102]

Also a random question, that may play into which snake I get right now. What snakes can be bred to pied ball pythons, and still have the pied ball trait show?

the pied gene is a recessive trait meaning both parents need to carry the gene in order to produce visual pieds. So you can breed a het to a het, het to a visual, or visual to a visual and with those pairings you should produce some visual pieds.