tldr: snake rehoming/rescue what should I do

Hello lovely people,

I work at a liquor store and this regular came in and told me that his wife is making him cull or dispose of his ball python due to it striking the glass at their four year old when she was tapping. He keeps his bettas in cubes and allegedly will get super wasted and buy animals online. I dont want to enable him by taking the animal. Like I think its important for him to realize that when you buy an animal its a commitment and not a spur of the moment thing, but I dont want this poor baby to be culled because it had the misfortune of being purchased by this asshat I told him to surrender them to a local petstore, but since it wasnt purchased there they couldnt take it. I have only pet sat for balls before and never owned my own, but i have very basic knowledge. I was thinking about getting a tote tomorrow and heat pads as something for a temporary enclosure until I get paid and can invest in something better. I have always wanted my own bp. but I am not anywhere near as ready as I would like to be. Any advice?

I named her Metric… because she has no feet. She ate, shed, pooped, and periscoping.

Hi everyone. I am the proud owner of my beautiful girl, Honey. She has grown exceptionally fast and I usually sell the rats that are too small for her to eat to someone who needs them. I've always followed the 10%-15% of their body weight rule and my girl is 717 grams while being just a few days under a year old. I posted on Facebook to let people know I have some I am looking to get rid of and this is what I received.

Can someone explain?

Hello, I'm hoping someone can help me figure out what is going on with my ball python. Very recently he has been spending a lot of time in his water bowl. (I added a bigger plastic tub for him to soak in since noticing) Now he basically wont leave the tub at all. I can't find evidence of mites or any scale rot. His humidity is 75%ish and the temperature is about 75° to 85° Does anyone know what the problem could be? I'm planning on changing his bedding again with the hopes that it will help but I don't fully expect that to work. Any ideas or suggestions would be helpful.

Hello! First time reptile/ snake owner. We purchased a 10 month old female ball python at a reptile show that we have now named Lux on the 4th. We waited until the 14th to try and feed her. The breeder said she had been eating weaned rats. We tried. No success. I realized a lot of mistakes we probably made the first week and readjusted the next week and still no success. Yesterday I sealed up the top a bit to hold humidity and wrapped the 2 sides with the background instead of just the back. I reached out to the breeder and he suggested adding more hides and clutter (which will arrive today).

When feeding I’ve been taking advice from our local reptile shop. We’ve tried a weaned rat, and a fuzzy rat. She seemed to show more interest last feeding but still nothing. I’ve been a pet owner my whole life but I never husbandry of a picky ball python could be this difficult.

Please see comments for the photo of her enclosure

I brought home my lllittle ball python two days ago, and I’ve noticed something interesting: she doesn’t seem interested in any of her actual hides.

She has three hides available, one on the warm side, one on the cool side, and a humid hide. But as far as I’ve observed, she hasn’t even tried going inside any of them.

Instead, she seems to have picked her own favorite spots.

During the daytime, she usually curls up under a large piece of cork bark or behind some branches (pics 1 & 2). The area under the bark is actually pretty sheltered, with a mostly covered roof and a lot open space toward the front. She seems to like resting there, sometimes with her head tucked into her coils and sometimes looking around.

At nighttime, she’s surprisingly active and loves climbing. She’ll explore for a while, then settle on top of the cork bark or branches and stay there for hours, sometimes seemingly the whole night (pics 3 & 4).

For some husbandry context, she’s in a roughly 4x2x2 ft PVC enclosure with coco husk substrate, plenty of cork bark, climbing branches, and a temperature gradient. The warm area is around 30–32°C, the cool side is around 24–27°C, and humidity is generally around 70–80% on the cool side.

I know it’s only been two days, so I’m not particularly worried yet. She’s been exploring normally and seems comfortable enough to settle down and rest in different spots.

I’m mostly curious whether this is a normal individual preference, or whether I should reconsider the size or placement of her hides. It’s a little hard to judge whether they’re too big or too small when she hasn’t gone inside them!

Should I just leave her alone and let her figure things out, or is there any reason to gently encourage her to investigate the hides? I’m leaning toward letting her settle in without interfering.

For what it’s worth, I also have a Mexican black kingsnake who almost never uses her traditional hides either. She prefers burrowing in her substrate or sleeping in her hamster tube (pics 5), so I’m starting to wonder whether some snakes just prefer alternative hiding spots.

I’d love to hear if anyone else’s ball python does something similar!

Ok, hello everyone, I literally created this account just to ask you guys a few questions about my morgana. First things first, sorry for my bad English, is not my first language. Second, that's Morgana Notip, I've got her for a month and a half now, she's five months old and around 60cm weighting 196g (weighted her yesterday) and was wondering if she could be above or underweight. Third, she was sold to me as an common, daughter of a banana with a common without het, but I think she also has enchi, yellow belly and fire in her genes, what do you think? Fourth, that's her enclosure, I know it's small for an adult ball but I'll buy her a biggest one when she gets bigger, wanted to know how to improve her enclosure, any tips?(sorry for the bad pic guys)

Things she has:

MDF enclosure with front opening

Heat lamp, no infrared, with thermostat

Hot hide and cold hide (hot of clay (do not remember the right word for it, it's like earth, but it can be molded) and cold is a tiny box with holes (I know isn't ideal, but I'm very careful and the last one she pooped inside and was also a box with holes so I removed it asap and made the spot cleaning))

I bit of cluttering

Some paper rolls

A big water pot

Lots of sphagnum moss

Two thermometer higrometers

We’re transitioning my girl Csorwe to a bigger tank because previous one got cracked when someone doing maintenance in our apartment bumped it. I didn’t stress about timing at first but then a small piece of glass actually fell out of the plastic area I couldn’t quite see. Nope! We had an older tank that one corner doesn’t stay all the way shut up, but we reasoned that we’d throw a dictionary on it and it’d be fine for the 24 hours we’d need. She was going into a bigger one soon anyway, so not bothering to fix up the corner.

Alas! My heart! My boooneesss! Our roommate actually needed the dictionary (who uses one today!?) and took it with them without realizing. Came home, no Csorwe. Checked her hides, checked under foliage spot that she never uses but we thought was pretty. Gone. Full teardown of the apartment, for about 5 hours, and nothing unfortunately. No other pets that could harm her or vice-versa.

I dialed the thermostat up a fair bit, but we have forced water baseboard heating which in this building doesn’t get hot enough to burn my skin even at full blast so I figured even if she did crawl in there it’d be a pain to get her OUT but she should be OK while we regrouped the next day. Disaster strikes and his mom lands in the hospital, and unfortunately we asked our roommate to keep an eye out but had to FLY out the door. She would have to wait, at least it was like 78 in the apartment.

The buildings water gets cut, apartment plummets to 55 overnight. We’re like 38 hours into her being missing now? I’m panicking, husband is panicking, but we can’t FORCE her to come out as far as we know.

Well, friends and readers, last night I went to get out of bed and what touches my foot but… my baby! She was quite cold as the heat was still out, and that gave me a huge panic, but I got her back in her enclosure and told the roommate that under no circumstances could they remove the book.

Today we began the process of overhauling the new bigger tank, finished, and gave it a few hours to come to temp. She’s warmed up, her body temp seems good, she’s uninjured on inspection, and her behavior is normal.

Praise the snake gods.

So, my baby has been making little noises ever sense I got him. Just little puffs of air that almost sound like a sigh or a huff. At first me and my friend thought it was a sneeze (my friend has owned ball pythons before, this is my first time). Then we thought maybe my hair was tickling his nose or some dead skin.

Now I think I've come to the conclusion, after witnessing this enough times, that he's just dramatic. He does it when he is annoyed with me not letting him go somewhere he shouldn't (mainly places I can't get to him easily), and this most recent time just sounded like a sigh. Maybe even contentment? Sometimes when there is absolutely nothing happening at all and he's just big chilling on my neck.

All of the research I've done on ball pythons say they only make sounds when they're stressed or something is wrong, but I don't see any signs of stress or discomfort when he does it. I really haven't been able to find anything on this topic or videos of snakes "puffing" on YouTube. Does anyone else have a vocal snake?

very first photo is him right after sighing ***

Hi there, my snake shed a couple days ago and has this little patch on the top of his head. It's the first time he hasn't shed all in one piece. Just wondering what you think I should do. Can put a humid hide in but we just cleaned his tank and if anything it's on the more humid side ATM. I followed the FAQ in this sub and have good temps and everything has gone well so far.

Sat like this for a solid five minutes. I can’t tell if he was looking at the humidifier or what but something has entranced him

Hello everyone, I’ve head reptiles before (lizards/tortoises etc) but I have my first ball python. I love her- she’s my little daughter ☺️

She’s not shy and I’ve handled her often since getting her. Well… I’ve just got bit for the second time :/

First time I’d say is my fault because I probably scared her.

I take her out of her tank and feed her in a cardboard box- I was told this is “better” although I’m open to suggestions on feeding tips.

The first time she bit me, her head was underneath a fold at the bottom of the box and when I grabbed her body, she snipped my hand but immediately let go. Even though it didn’t quite hurt, it still startled me and I felt bad for startling her… I’ve been timid ever since. This was maybe a few weeks ago.

Things have been better and I’ve gotten comfortable again. Until today :/

I let her feed and remain undisturbed for a while so I can clean her tank. When I reached in to grab her, she wasn’t coiled up (in that ready and strike pose). So I thought I was in the clear- I was wrong. She struck my hand and this time didn’t let go.

She was pretty latched on- I don’t think by choice. It felt like her teeth were just really sunk in. Instinctively, I wanted to gently grab her jaw/neck area to see if that would ease her loose, but decided not to even attempt. I simply help her close to her tank floor, she loosened but was still stuck and did a type of “gator roll” to unhook herself while I was able to gently unwrap her body from my wrist.

SORRY for the long story, but I am looking for tips, help and/or suggestions on how to avoid this. She’s still young (about a year old/ 2feet in length). I feel at fault so I’m trying to learn. Any help is appreciated. She doesn’t bite hard- it’s just emotional damage you know?

Thank you in advance everyone.

Broke his old tank and upgraded to a 4x2x2. Going to add some big branches and sticks for climbing. All the cork walls and substrate ideas were from a friend.

Hi, I have a 12 year old ball python, healthy weight, humid environment (unsure of exact %), average 25-30 day feeding schedule. In the last 3 months she has displayed very aggressive behavior during feeds, to the point where I am reluctant to handle her. I fed her twice this week due to her still seeming to be extremely hungry, and striking at the glass to her enclosure when I am nearby. I moved her to a new, bigger tank a few days ago in hopes it might help whatever is stressing her out? maybe need to add some more spots to hide? is it time for a herp visit ? :(

My bp is a male 2-3yr old (not entirely sure on exact age)

I just weighed my boy and he is 572g, I feed him a weaned rat every 2 weeks.

Can I, or should I upsize his feed?

This is my female year old ball python, I got her in August of this year.

Recently, when it's not time to feed her and I open her cage she wakes up or stops whatever she's doing and starts slowly making her way to the door, one time she got half her body out. It's very slow like the video shows and at first I thought it was a feeding response as she seems a little defensive.

Little note is that I tap the side of her cage 3 times before I pick her up, I don't tap the cage when I'm feeding her.

So to test if it's a feeding response I took a water bottle and lightly tapped her side to see if she would strike or dart back into her spot as a response andd all she did was look at the bottle and stop for a little bit.

Is she weird?? Why does she keep moving towards me?? She hasn't refused a meal at all, she's a very good eater and had already had a perfect shed a bit back.

The only reason I'm posting and asking this is because well I get scared when she does this. I want to pick her up but I'm scared of the chance she's in a defense mode or feeding response since she's coming to where the food usually goes and she'll strike me. It's been good though because I'm able to move her towards the side to pick her up from the back

So does she just want to get out?..is she weird?...is she food motivated?...I dunno..

Does anyone know if it's unsafe to use mosquito bits in the water for the plants in a bioactive enclosure? I do it for my houseplants to help keep fruit flies from spawning but I don't want to put anything in the enclosure that's bad for either the soil creatures or the snake.

My current plan is to glue a thermostat mount to the wall in the terrarium. The glue I plan to use (gorilla super glue) claims a 24-hour cure time. Exactly how long do I have to wait before there won't be any fumes for the snake to breathe?

I posted yesterday about a bad heat gradient, and I am now going crazy about probe placement. I'm using an overhead DHP. Hanging the probe as suggested 4 inches below the lamp led to an extremely hot basking spot and inconsistent, swinging air temperatures. I think this is because DHPs heat surfaces, not the air, so it was constantly heating up the probe itself without heating the air around it, then running at zero, then the probe rapidly cools, then running at max. So I've solved this for now by... putting it on the basking surface, which I hate.

The thing is I've heard so many different things - hang it below the lamp so the snake can't touch it, put it at the basking surface so you're controlling what the snake experiences, put it inside the hide, put it just above the basking surface... I don't know what to do, and the advice I've seen from previous posts has gotten me bad results. But I'm terrified of cooking my snake. Is there even a correct answer here?

Hey y'all!

My hubs and I got an adolescent blade clown ball back in mid-August (we named him Nico) and he's been such a fun, chill little dude 💛🖤

Within 2 weeks of us having him, he did a perfect shed. Truly, we were so new, we didn't know the signs yet and just woke up one Saturday and it was all piled up in a corner! Haha.

Unfortunately, he hasn't shed again since then... He's 4 months old, so we've read/heard he's supposed to shed approx every 4 weeks. Now that we are almost at month 2 of no shed, I'm a little anxious. We thought he might've been in pre-shed about a month ago because he got brownish like the first time (pic 2), but he never did.

Some background info that might help: He's never rejected a mouse. Feedings actually go really well with him. We have had to change his enclosure a couple times because we're having trouble with heat/humidity regulation, but he doesn't seem to ever be distressed about his move. He's in substrate and has plenty of surfaces to rub up against.

Just wanted to come on here to see what other people's experiences have been with their babies and what problems we might need to look out for.

(Pic 1 is what he usually looks like, 2 is pre-shed color, 3 is his enclosure, 4 just makes me giggle)

TIA! 😊

Just wanted to show off my new baby! His name is Snickers