Any reptile experts here?

[OCBob]

Tomorrow is the Boy's birthday. I am thinking of getting him a snake. Probably a Ball Python. Anything special I should be looking for? I have had boa's and monitors in the past, but that was 20 years ago.

 

[tinygiants]

I kept and bred snakes for a decade.

Ball pythons are a very good first snake. They are quite tame in general. When threatened they ball up in a nice ball, thus the name. You really want to steer clear of wild cought. They have a terrible time eating in captivity. Many suffer a long slow death in the pet trade as a result. Spend the extra money and buy captive bred. Then you can get feeding records on the animal, and most breeder will help a lot more than a local pet shop.

The temps should be kept in a range from about the upper 70 F on one end of the enclosure to a high of 98 at the other. This is often hard to do when trying to make a high humidity enclosure. I favored a heat tape product like flexwatt along the back wall of the habitat. I would put a basking lamp over that as well. Put a suitable hide box over the heated back and the cooler front. That way the snake can have warm or cooler without sacrifixing security.

During the acclimation peroid, give the snake space. This is the hard one, every one wants to hold the new pet. The snake will settle down better to a routine if it is left alone for a few days.

Never feed live prey. If you do, supervise the feeding. A non eating snake will not kill the prey animal in defense. Eventually the small mouse will kill the snake if the snake is not hungry/eating.

Good Luck
Dale

 

[tinygiants]

Check out my old website for links to more info.

http://www.tinygiants.com

The site is old and abandoned, but some good links are available in the search engine.

 

[05RamSRTkid]

very well said. My family has had their share of reptiles in the past. From snakes to monitors and other lizards. All of which were captive bred. We did have one that eas caught in the wild but died a few weeks later. One thing I can also suggest is to stay away from some of the wood mulch as beding as it can sometimes contain mites, which irritate the snake and cause problems

 

[tinygiants]

very well said. My family has had their share of reptiles in the past. From snakes to monitors and other lizards. All of which were captive bred. We did have one that eas caught in the wild but died a few weeks later. One thing I can also suggest is to stay away from some of the wood mulch as beding as it can sometimes contain mites, which irritate the snake and cause problems

I like the reptile barks as a substrate, because of its ability to hold moisture. My mulch has been in storage for years, so all living parasites are long since deceased. If parasites are truly a concern, bake the substrate in the oven for a few hours before using after freezing it. That being said, mites are the fleas of the snake world. I also like to use moss in the hiding area for moisture sake. You want 90+% humidity when dealing with boas and pythons.

Dale

 

[OCBob]

I found a good reptile place down in Escondido, and took the Boy down to pick out his present. He picked this very nice looking baby ball. They had some real cool stuff down there, I could have dropped a small fortune. They had a red tree boa and a yellow tree boa that were just bitching looking. Some real cool blue poison arrow frogs as well. They also had some of the exotic ball pythons. That is really pretty cool as a hobby, I think I might try my hand at it in a while.
Here is the baby that he picked out.

 

[BlackViperRam04]

Was the store called Reptile Haven?

 

[OCBob]

No, it was LLL Reptile.

 

[Black1]

Pretty cool lookin' little fella, Bob.

 

[tinygiants]

Congrats

 

[ILtemprd]

I thought this was a thread on Mother in Laws..my bad.