Unfair bad rep?

[Aaron_S]

In no particular order....

1. I am in agreement with Andy. In general I think people kept most of their reptile pets too cold and most still do. Hotter temps, only by a few degrees, increases activity and appetite.

2. Ball pythons, among other "beginner" species, fall victim to being really difficult to kill even with multiple mistakes on the keeper part. So when they go off feed people chalk it up to "oh it's a ball python" instead of really scrutinizing their keeping. To be fair, ball pythons have a bad eating habit that goes back decades to fresh imports.

3. I've stated this before and I'll say it again, Justin Koboylka(I think thats how you spell his last name) wrote an article on this topic on ball pythons. He said that we have to go look at ball python natural habits. They live in abandoned termite mounds, rodent burrows and etc. They go into these systems and eat whatever rodent family made them a nest then sit in wait for another unsuspecting prey item to come wander by.
Now, if these ambush predators are lying in wait, what's the #1 give away to a prey that a predator is near? Smell. Two things ball pythons do that smell, poop and shed. So what they do is usually do both together to get rid of the smell at the same time, and if they linger there they know that a potential meal will notice and skip them.

So JK used this to get any non-eaters eating. He would switch them to a brand new bin in his rack systems, even moving to a different rack system. He then experienced these non-eaters beginning to eat again within 2 weeks of the move whereas it usually took a number of weeks longer than that.

4. In my experiences I found that ball pythons tend to have a few more feeding issues than other species. My ball pythons are very good eaters, my adult males don't miss feedings and neither do my females unless gravid. My customers report to me that the babies do fantastically well for them. However, I'll have an animal miss one meal here or there for no apparent reason. Considering that they are kept in a rack system and it's a single animal when dozens of others are fed and eating it tells me it's either a shed I missed and it's a day away from shedding or simply a ball python thing.

To sum it up, it really is keeper error 9/10 times.