In 1984, I acquired a pair of ball pythons (Python regius). At the time, breeding of ball pythons was pretty unusual. Nevertheless, I spent several years throwing them together, raining on them in December (supposedly the most effective approach at the time), and eventually gave up and sold the animals. Both were wild caught and mature when obtained.

About 3 years ago, I purchased a number (7) of captive bred and/or hatched ball pythons with an emphasis on animals with a banded or spider type pattern (the latter is also sometimes called "melted" and has greatly reduced black blotches down the back with a lot of yellow in the ground color and a black line down each side of the venter). These animals were raised on thawed mice, mostly individually, although last fall, I began keeping several of mixed sexes together to save room. I had at least 4 or 5 animals together. The cage was about 3' X 2' X 1' high. During December, I dropped the room heater settings from 85 day and 80 night to 85/75 for 2 wks., 85/70 for 1-2 wks., and 80/70 for 1-2 nights. I was afraid to drop the day temperatures too low for fear of respiratory problems. During Jan. I attempted to spray the animals quickly with a mister every day, but I'm sure I skipped many days. Copulation was observed once, probably during Dec., but I didn?t note date or animals. One female laid 3 eggs on 4/1/02 (a fairly typical female with some banding effect posteriorly) and another laid 3 eggs on 4/6/02. The second female was my most spidery banded one, but when the eggs hatched (6/5/02 for first female and 6/12/02 for second), all the young were pretty similar with some banding, but not a lot.

Based on last year's experience, I plan this year to gradually drop the night temp during Dec. and mist in Jan., but I am trying to keep specific pairs together. Hopefully this will work out, although I know in some species, multiple males tend to encourage copulation.