All the big breeders cool their ball pythons during breeding, it's pretty much standard practice across the board. However, I don't cool my BP either! In their native habitat there isn't really a cool season. The triggers I use to breed are increasing food consumption and pairing up males and females. Seems like cooling is counter productive, I find that if I increase or decrease my room temp or hotspots I have a lot of ball pythons going off of food from the temperature change. That's exactly what you don't want, you want an increase in food consumption. For me it seems like the more food a snake eats the more times I see it locked up with the male. And I don't wait for follicle growth before I pair up, it seems that pairing up actually stimulates the follicle growth and gets things going. I also don't watch for and record locks, doesn't really matter to me. I just keep cycling the males through nonstop for five or six months with weekends off for feeding. The females either go or they don't. It seems like the females that don't go are the ones that don't eat very well during the start of the breeding season.