Making a BEL.

[asplundii]

A secondary question: Is there anything I can do to minimize the chance of getting bug-eyed baby ball pythons?

The simple answer is to just not breed the morphs that are prone to it.

A secondary question: Is there anything I can do to minimize the chance of getting bug-eyed baby ball pythons?

Some online suggestions for minimizing the probability of congenital anomalies in a human baby:

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Dave Barker of VPI recommends avoiding obesity in ball pythons.

Besides humans, breeder trout, chickens and pigs need higher levels of vitamins than nonbreeders. Do breeder ball pythons?

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Do African rodents gut load themselves with greens at a time when ball python follicles are developing? I sure don't know the answers.

So there is some food for thought. Good luck.

I get the point you are making and I do not necessarily refute it but I offer up a few thoughts playing devil's advocate:

-While rodent breeders do not necessarily gut-load, most commercial rodent diets have been balanced to provide/meet the needs of the rodents so they are, in effect, being gut loaded.
-If nutrient-deficiencies in our animals were the cause of the bug-eyes then should we not be seeing bug-eyes occurring across the spectrum of our hatchlings and not only among very specific morph combinations?
-I fully agree with Dave that obesity should be avoided (in all snakes, not just balls) but again, if obesity were a contributing cause then should we not be seeing a much higher instance of defects across the board in our breeding because if we are being brutally honest most keepers do overfeed their animals?