Welcome to the forum JB. I hope you find it informative as well as meeting other like minded folks.

It's obvious you have a number of husbandry issues you are facing and thinking about making some changes for the betterment of your snakes. Whether you choose to house them in more of a display environment or not, I believe you really should consider seperating them but that will be ultimately your choice. There are many very good reasons for this. I'll address just one of them here however.

The one point I'd like you to think about though is this. Your female has obviously bred to this male a number of times, each clutch being unsuccessful for whatever reasons. To put her through this season after season with no expectation of a good result just for me, doesn't make sense. Leaving them together will only promote breeding that you aren't prepared to manage and take away all that time your female could be just eating, growing and doing well w/o the physical stresses of uncontrolled mating. Also as far as I know, an adult male and female ball python in their natural environment would never associate with each other than for the short breeding time.

I would also ask you to think about that heat rock. They are known to be dangerous. That heat rock may work for years then suddenly badly burn your snakes. We have a rescue boa here that came in with a thermal belly burn of over 3 feet in length from only 1 month's exposure to a heat rock. Please reconsider that heat rock. There are so many other heating options and any of us will gladly steer you to them.

I hope I've not offended you JB. I'd like to see you enjoy the site and learn, as we've all learned and are still learning about different ways to care for this beautiful creatures.


~~Jo~~