Quote Originally Posted by Ginevive
Wow; this is weird. My '02 male, Ashes, seems to be a dwarf. He eats regularly and has no internal parasites, and is kept at optimal conditions. But he is still only around 2 feet in length; it seems that he has not grown much in a year!
Maybe he is a dwarf? He has a great appetite, feeding on hopper rats, and a nice muscular body structure. But he still seems to be smaller than he should be.
"Dwarfism" is a genetic condition. Without breeding him to find out what's behind his genetics, he is technically just a "smaller" ball python. I've found that there is a pretty extreme variability to sizes among both male and female ball pythons.

For example, I have a 1999 male pastel that is well over 3000 grams and a 1999 hypo that is 1,100 grams ... both are fed on the same schedule and are free of internal parasites.

-adam