Ball Python Care Part 2 - by Stu at 2amCreations.com

Common Problems

I wanted to cover some of the common problems with ball pythons and ways to avoid or treat them. Let me say this though, I am not a veterinarian nor do I play one on TV.

Stress is probably the number one problem with ball pythons. It can come from any number of sources and can cause or aggrevate other problems. Overhandling is the biggest source of stress, you have to remember these are not domesticated animals, they instinctivly fear us. By handling your snake too much you can be putting a lot of undue stress on the animal. Now each snake is different, some actually seem to enjoy being handled. This is where you have to be able to read your snake. Traffic around the snakes cage, lack of proper hiding areas, too much light, and more than one snake in a cage are all contibutors to stress. A stressed snake will have a weakened immune system, lack of appetite, and may be more aggressive than normal. This opens up the snake to all sorts of problems, some of which are covered below.

Probably the most common ailment with ball pythons is respiratory infections. The symptoms are clicking or wheezing when breathing, lifting up the head and gaping of the mouth. Don't confuse this with normal ball python behavior of yawning while cruising around. There will also be a lot of fluid in the snakes mouth, which will bubble out the sides when really bad. A lack of appetite usually accompanies RI's also.

RI's come from low humidity and low temps. After talking with some experienced herpers and vets it seems as though there may be more than one kind of RI. I don't know of any studies confirming or denying this, so at this point it's at least possible.

Fig. 1 - High Contrast Albino Ball Python.

RI's can be transmitted by contact, either with a sick snake or from you touching a sick snake then touching a healthy one without washing your hands first. If you have a sick snake, always deal with it last when cleaning, checking cages, etc... Also always wash your hands up to the elbows after handling a sick snake, you may also want to change your shirt. I'm not sure if that's going too far, but I'd rather not take the chance.

The best defense against RI's is having good humidity levels and keeping your temps up. Also, keep your cages away from drafts and air vents. Washing your hands after handling each snake is also a good idea. This may sound a little over the top, but I know one breeder who does this and asks that his visitors do the same. You might not realize that your snake has an RI at the very beginning and you could unwittingly transmit the disease.

If your snake does come down with a RI you will need to seek out a good reptile vet. These can be hard to come by. Your snake will need medication, also, you will want to turn up the heat a little more than normal. For some reason sick snakes often seek out the coolest part of their cage so increasing the overall heat will be beneficial.

Besides medication there are other things you can do to help your snake get better. Note: The following are in no way a suitable replacement for medication.

Move the snake into an enclosure that is much taller than the snake. Put something in the cage (branch, etc..) for the snake to climb on. The reason behind this is that snakes don't really have a cough mechanism like we do so by giving the snake ample room to move its body it will be able to let some of the "snot" either drain out or fall back into the lung. Either way it's keeping the fluids out of the mouth so the snake can breath.

Keep the snakes enclosure a little warmer than usual. This does not mean to cook your snake. When I have a snake with an RI I put it into an aquarium with a heat pad and a heat lamp. From some talks I've had it seems that most of the bacterias that cause RIs can't handle temps in the 90+ degree range. By making the whole tank a "hot spot" you are increasing the snakes body temperature and helping to kill off the bacteria. The heat lamps do not run 24 hours a day, they are set on a timer on a 12/12 schedule.

Excercise your sick snake. Take the snake out daily and handle it for 15-30 minutes. Make it move around and use its muscles. This seems to help loosen the "snot" in the snakes lung.

Stomach Rot and Mouth Rot are the other two most common problems. The names for these diseases are not really what the problem is but these are the common names they have been given. As far as mouth rot, I don't really know what causes it other than bacteria, but a common symptom is constantly rubbing the snout. Most bp's will spend a good amount of their active time looking for ways to get out of their cage, this usually involves pushing on the glass and lid with their nose. Most soon learn that the effort is futile but others don't. I believe this is one reason for a problem that falls into the mouth rot group. Another reason is simply bacteria or germs. There really isn't anything you can do to get a ball python to stop rubbing it's nose on things, but you can avoid germs and bacteria by keeping your cages clean. All this does not mean that if you see your snake rubbing it's nose that it has a problem. Most will do it after eating, and as they start a shed. This is one of the main problems when dealing with snake related illnesses is that they normally don't give any big clues that they are sick until they are really sick. Mouth rot needs to be treated by a vet, your snake will need medication to fully recover.

Fig. 2 - Mohave Ball Python.

Stomach Rot or stomatitis will start out with the belly scales turning reddish, the scales also turn this way when preparing to shed. With stomatitis some scales will bubble up, some will turn brownish and get crusty. This is also sometimes refered to as urine burn. I believe that most times stomatitis starts out as a urnine burn that goes untreated. Urine burn comes from unsanitary living conditions. This is why it's so important to keep your cages clean. If you notice the belly scales getting reddish and the snake is showing no other signs of preparing for a shed you will want to take a trip to the vet. Keep the snake on newspaper with only a water bowl and hide box while you are treating the snake. You will want to check on the snake daily to make sure the cage is clean and dry.

IBD or Inclusion Body Disease is not really a common ailment but one that must at least be mentioned. It is 100% fatal in all cases. There is still so much debate about where the disease comes from, how it works, how it's transmitted, and how to fight it that someone could fill an entire novel with the information. The symptoms seem to be loss of motor skills and muscle control, and star gazing ( staring straight up for hours at a time ). I think there are other's but these two seem to be the most prominant. I recommend that you look into this disease further for more information. If you think your snake may have it take it to the vet, but call first and let them know the possibility of what you may have. They will want to take extra precautions with your animal.

These are the reasons why you should always quarentine new snakes from the rest of your group. You never know what the new snake may have in it's system. Quarentine should last for at least a month or so, I know some folks who do it for up to six months.

Any time your snake shows signs of odd behavior you should consider a checkup with the vet. Snakes in general do a really good job of hiding the fact that they are sick until the disease has really taken hold.

Behavior

After talking about diseases I want to say a few words about ball python behavior in general so you don't look up, see your ball doing something weird, and think it's going to die. This is exactly what I did when I first starting reading about ball python diseases and problems.

Ball python behavior is really based on only a few things. Hunger, security, and their unbelievable curiosity. At least I consider it curiosity, I don't know what else to call it. Do take into consideration that snakes can't read and really don't care what I've written here. Ours continue to do things that amaze us. It becomes more obvious with the more snakes you have that each one does have some sort of personality. Also remember that snakes are very low on the intelligence level, most things that they do are simply out of natural instinct, or possibly habit. A lot of people like to anthropomorphize human emotions onto their snakes, thinking that the snake likes to cuddle, etc... Snakes, as far as scientific studies have shown, do not feel emotions like we do. With all that said, let's cover some "normal" behavior.

Fig. 3 - Piebald Ball Python.

These are mainly nocturnal snakes that hide during the day and come out at night to hunt for food or find a new spot to hide in. This is the extent of what they do in the wild except for breeding. Expect for your ball python to hide most of the time during the day. If it's out roaming around during the day I would check the temperatures and possibly feed it if the temps are fine. If it's not hungry and the temps are good, then chances are your ball python simply refuses to accept that he's supposed to be nocturnal. For the majority of ball pythons if you want to see them being active you'll have to go look at them in the early evening, middle of the night, or just before sunrise.

When a ball python is entering it's shed cycle it may not come out of it's hide box at all for a few days, or it may only come out to drink then go right back in. This is always a good indicator that a shed is coming.

Ball pythons yawn. Do we know why? No. We do know that they do it after eating to realign their jaws. But for some reason ball pythons do this quite frequently. If your snake is holding it's mouth open for long periods of time, say more than 30 seconds or so, then you may have a RI on the way. But normally ball pythons will just do this for no apparent reason. It is really amazing to watch as they flex the muscles in their jaws. It's not always fun to see them do it while your holding them and your thumb is right in front of it's mouth!

Now for the action that got the ball python it's name. Balling up. This is a defense action that ball pythons do when scared or threatened. It is usually seen in young ball pythons or one's that are new to your collection. They don't know the scents around them and anything that moves may be a potential threat. Once a ball python gets to know your scent and gets comfortable in it's surroundings you will see this far less often. I haven't seen my 5 year old male do this in 4 years. If your snake does this when you go to pick it up, no problem, pick it up and just let it rest in your lap for a few minutes. After the snake realizes that your not going to eat it most will relax and start to explore.

Something that I've seen a few times on the online forums is a statement about their snake draining liquid from their mouth. If it's a large amount of mostly water what probably happened is that your snake just got done taking a drink. Ball Pythons do not have a way to stop the water they just drank from coming back out. If it's just bubbling and thick, it is probably a sign of a respiratory infection.

Exploring and getting into trouble. This is also normal behavior. Ball pythons seem to be extremely curious and will stick their nose into any hole or opening that it can. We have a great time letting our snakes roam around the living room, under supervision of course. Most of ours will raise their heads up off the ground quite a ways as though they are scanning the area. If you are letting your snake roam around odds are they will get wrapped around something just before you can pull them away. As long as they aren't in danger just let them finish exploring, you'll have a tough time unwrapping and unwinding it from whatever it wants to hold on to. Which brings up another point. If you need to unwrap your snake from something, like your arm, start at the tail end first and gently work the snake off. If you start at the head your facing an uphill battle. You will soon learn that an adult ball python is extremely strong.

Climbing and falling. Ball pythons are able to climb, just not exceptionally well. When they are young it seems to be worse but our adults don't seem to really be much better. We had our old male in a Vision cage, these cages have a lip above the doors which is perfect for a ball python to crawl across. Usually about 2-3 in the morning he would fall off his perch, waking me up and getting the dogs into a frenzy, and he was in another room! If you have things for your ball to climb on, they will take advantage of it. Don't worry too much about them falling, it hasn't done any of ours any harm. Of course I am assuming that your snake is in a relatively low cage, if it's up 6-7 feet then yes the fall could do some damage.

Striking isn't really normal behavior for a ball python except at feeding time. Balls are normally very docile with a very mellow temperament. This does not mean that there aren't exceptions. Hatchlings can be quite nippy for a little while and some will remain that way into adulthood. Out of 40 some snakes we have one adult that will still strike once in a while, which is understandable because she was a wild caught adult, but she has settled down. I have heard that if a ball python is being kept at too high of a temperature that can make them more likely to bite, also, when their eyes are blue, or when they are sick. We really haven't seen much of this but it has been noted by others.

A short story about biting

This is how I got into reptiles. I had always been rather afraid of snakes when I was growing up. I always thought they were cool to look at but you wouldn't catch me picking one up.
I was in a pet shop with a friend one day and he wanted to see the ball pythons. I stepped back a few feet when the worker handed it to him. After he had held it for a few minutes and I saw that it wasn't going to kill him I got a little braver and stepped closer. I reached out to pet the snake and WHAM! I got nailed on the hand. A second later I realized that it hadn't killed me, I was still standing, and unbelievably it didn't even hurt! I washed off my hand, dried it, and low and behold, you could barely even see where I had been bitten. This was the end of my fear of snakes, you still won't catch me playing with any of the giant species, but at least I won't run away. I can now look at them and see how beautiful and magnificent these creatures really are. I did find out before I left the pet shop that the snake hadn't been fed in two weeks so it was probably more than a little hungry. Not his fault at all.

Fig. 4 - Striped Ball Python.

Ball pythons will hiss occasionally, letting you know they don't really want to be bothered. If you leave them alone after hissing you are reinforcing the fact that if they hiss you'll go away. I make a point to hold any of ours that hiss at me just to let them know it won't work. This seems to help in the process of taming them down. You must remember that you are dealing with wild animals, these are not domesticated like dogs and cats. They still have an instictive fear of anything bigger than they are, you really do have to earn their trust.

Another thing to remember, your snake will not play with other animals. I know this may be obvious to some but not to everyone. You need to make sure that your snake is kept safe from your other pets. A meeting between your snake and fluffy the cat would probably not end up well. Also make sure that you keep pets away from your snakes cage. I heard a story a while ago about a snake that stopped eating unexpectedly, after a little investigation the owner found out that when they were away at work the cat was sitting beside the cage staring at the snake all day. This ended up stressing the snake to the point of not eating.

Keeping Records

No, I'm not talking about your old LP's here. Recording information on your snake has several benefits, especially in large collections. Even if you only have one or two snakes this can help tremendously when dealing with problems.

You don't have to keep track of every little movement your snake makes, but there are some things that should be noted. Each snake should have it's own record card. This can be anything from a piece of notebook paper to a 5 x 7 card, you can even buy premade record cards. You can get as fancy as you want with the cards. but there is really only a few things that you'll need to keep track of.

You'll want a way to identify which snake goes with which card, either by a name or number. The other information you'll definitely want to make note of is feeding/refusal, shedding (full or incomplete), breeding, and the date whichever event took place on. I have seen some very elaborate cards that track lineage, date's received or sold, who the snake was received from, who it was sold to, bowel movements, when the eyes turned blue, what species it is, and even a drawing of special markings. With today's digital cameras it makes it very easy to photograph all your snakes for record purposes.

By keeping records you don't have to rely on memory for some rather important facts. Say your snake is in need of vet treatment. You can take the snakes card with you so the vet will know all the possible info you can give him. Perhaps your working on a breeding project, now all you have to do is look at the card to find out what snakes have been in together and what, if anything happened. There are a million different reasons why you will want to keep some kind of records for your animals.

Some breeders use rather elaborate record keeping strategies including multiple cards, stickers, color of ink, etc...Again, you can get as fancy as you want to, the better records you keep the better off you are. We use one card per snake and only record feeding, shedding, breeding, and vet visits. We also keep digital photos of each snake. It is often hard to be excited about keeping records, but it is a very useful tool, especially if you get into breeding some of the more expensive snakes. Your customers will greatly appreciate getting those records along with the snake so that they can see what has gone on in it's life.

Basic Genetics

If you've looked at any other ball python websites you've surely seen the "morphs". These genetic traits are broken down into a couple of main categories. Color morphs and pattern morphs. In both of these categories the traits are again broken down into recessive and CO-dominant traits. You will also see things like "het for albino", "double het for snow", "50% possible het", and "66% possible het". Already getting confused? Don't worry it's actually rather simple until you get into some of the double het stuff.

First let's talk about the color and pattern morphs. These are animals that do not show the normal "wild type" colors or patterns. The color morphs are well established and new ones will be coming for the next decade or so. Pattern morphs are a little harder to deal with since there is no cut and dried criteria for what constitutes a pattern morph.

The color morphs obviously have to do with color. These animals show traits that differ from the normal ball python coloring. The following are known and proven color morphs.

• Amelanistic Albino
• Xanthic Albino
• Piebald
• Leucistic
• Hypomelanistic - there is a great deal of variety in this group
• Axanthic
• Platinum
• Snow - a double het creation that should be recessive

Color morphs that are being worked on right now include.

• True Ghost - another double het
• Sunglow - yet another double het
• Melanistic

Color morphs at this point all seem to be simple recessive genes that can be proven again and again.

This list is of the pattern morphs that have proven to be genetic.

• Spider - CO-dominant
• Woma - CO-dominant
• Striped
• Labyrinth
• Black striped
• Banded
• Reduced pattern

The last three on the list above are known genetic but still require further breeding to reliably produce these morphs.

This last list contains morphs that fall into both categories since their coloring and pattern are different from normal patterns.

• Bumble Bee Spider
• Clown
• Pastel/Lemon Pastel - CO-dominant
• Super Pastel - apparently dominant

Pretty simple so far right? Okay here's where things can get tricky, the actual genetics. A recessive trait is one that can be reliably reproduced by line breeding either direct offspring back to the original mating pair or siblings to each other. I know this doesn't sound like a good idea, this is one reason why proving out morphs can take so long, most reputable breeders do not want to damage their breeding stock by continually line breeding their animals, so they will bring in other known genetic snakes or bring in normal snakes to increase diversity in the bloodline.

A CO-dominant trait is one that is displayed in the first breeding. If you take a snake that displays a CO-dominant trait and breed it to a normal type snake, half of the offspring should also show the co-dom trait. A dominant trait would have all of the offspring displaying the trait.

That isn't to difficult, let's tackle hets now. We'll handle how recessive traits work first.

• When a snake displays a trait it is said to be homozygous.
• When a snake is known to carry a gene for a trait but still displays the normal look it is heterozygous, or het for short.

• When you breed a homozygous snake to a normal type, all of the offspring will be het for that trait. This is where the 50-66% hets come in.
• When a homozygous snake is bred to a het, half of the offspring should show the trait and the other half will be hets.
• If you take a known het snake and breed it to a normal type, all the offspring have a 50% chance of carrying the trait.
• If the breeding is a known het to a known het, then some of the offspring will actually display the desired trait while the rest of the offspring will all have a 66% chance of being hets.

Fig. 5 - Snow Ball Python (One of only 7 in the world at the time this photograph was taken).

Genetics experts have come up with the Punnets square, this is a table you can use to determine the above percentages. I have added a basic Punnets square on the right hand side of this page. Since I'm not a genetics expert I'll simply say that it works. As usual, snakes don't follow percentages either. The above rules are what should happen, the reality of it is that it doesn't always work that way, but for the most part it does.

On to the co-dominant traits. It is appearing that the co-dominant traits are really just visible hets for another completely dominant trait. This theory has been given a foot hold with the pastels and super pastels. The only problem is when getting into dominant traits that all the offspring will show the trait, but not all will carry the gene to pass on the trait. With the co-dom traits the snake displaying the trait is surely a het, the rest of the offspring that looks normal is exactly that, normal, they do not carry the gene for any trait other than the normal type.

With the explosion of the ball python market comes a great opportunity for those out there without scruples. When purchasing hets it is imperative to get them from a reputable breeder since there is no visible way to tell a het from a normal. If you are wanting to get into some of the high end ball python morphs but can't afford the hefty price tag some demand, here's a much cheaper way in.

Possible hets. Here's the theory, you purchase a known het male of the morph you want, then purchase all the possible het females from a clutch of that same morph. Since you have all the possible het females from that clutch your odds are much higher that at least one of them is carrying the gene you are after. Once they are old enough you breed all those females to your known male het. After much hand wringing and hair pulling when the eggs hatch you have a much better chance of producing the trait that you were hoping for.

You could just make your own possible hets also. If you have some females that you could breed your known het to, you could hold back all of the female offspring and breed the het male to them. Both of these ways are how a lot of people have gotten into some of the high end morphs with far less expense, plus you get the excitement of doing the breeding yourself.

Credits

There are a few people that I would like to thank at this point. These folks have given me tons of help, information, and guidance as I've been learning. This list is not in any particular order.

• Kevin McCurley - thanx for the opportunity man.
• Ralph Davis - thanx for everything, you are DA MAN!
• Rob Carmichael - for pounding the word patience in my head.
• The good folks who run Kingsnake.com - without the forums we'd all be in trouble.
• Everyone who gave me permission to post their names and links in this book.
• Rich and Carl at Piedmont Reptile in High Point NC. - you guys are life savers!
• And last but not least, everyone in all the forums and email lists who have shared their knowledge with us.

Thank you all very much.

Article written by Stu at 2am Creations
Copyright 2am Creations - Reproduced with Permission
All images Copyright The Reptile Rooms ©2004 Unless otherwise noted.