I wish I would have known that feeding live will in most cases snap a ball python right out of a long fasting period. A few of my females would have been up to weight faster for this year's breeding season.
I wish I would have known that one male can breed up to five females so I would have bought more female breeders at the start. In fact I've seen people breed a male to up to 10 females! (even up to 16 females in extreme cases, not sure how successful they were though...)
I wish I would have known about Prococo or Reptichip coconut husk substrate back when I started.
I wish I would have known that pine wood chips (mostly non-kiln dried and dusty products) are toxic to rodents, I thought I had a bad disease at one point and was throwing out dead rats almost every day. I almost culled my whole colony at one point. Now I use shredded paper, pine pellets (wood stove fuel) and aspen wood chips. I also recently found out that I can make shredded newspaper for free but its very toxic to rats and mice causing birth defects and makes them sick and turns the white mice black. In fact I'm afraid to even read the newspaper now without using gloves LOL.
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