Reptile & Amphibian Forums

LOL! Sorry about your loss down below, but whenever I see people posting about their success with imports and encourage beginners, I'm saddened. You hear tons of stories about dead and dying imports (CH) but rarely do you hear one of captive bred. Hmmm. Makes you wonder doesn't it.

BUY CAPTIVE BRED!!
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Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles

If you have a reliable source that will guarantee you feeding CH Females...I would go with them. I am raising CH for the 2nd year in a row...and I have had 0 problems with them. On the other hand I do not recomend WC import adults to anybody...to much work...to difficult to get them to feed...to difficult to keep them feeding consistently.
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Michael Enriquez

I bought total 26 females (500g-1200g) in 2 seperate deals

3 of them ended up being males..I only ended up paying $88 per snake. I have had them since early May.

1 Died of RI
I HAVE ONLY 4 THAT ARE EATING WEEKLY!!!!!!!!
ONLY 3 OF THOSE WILL BE BIG ENOUGH TO BREED THIS YEAR
I have 9 that have eaten 1 or 2 times.

Now sure by next year if they are all eating and blah, blah, blah they may breed. I could have done alot better this year just buying 5 or 6 1500g females for the money i spent.

O but wait say the import buyers!!! You will have saved money when they breed next year. BS....I would have made enough from my spider male breeding one of those GOOD females to more than make up for the price difference and i could have bought even more GOOD females with the money I made.....If the pythons gods are on my side that is.

IMPORTS SUCK!!! Cars too..........

Yeah import balls suck... wont eat, wont breed, ticks, worms ect ect......

But import cars???? You must have never owned a honda man..... lol

Raul

I agree. Lots of my 2 and 3 year old ball pythons are CH that I purchased as babies. I've had zero problems with them. All are 0 healthy and have been eating consistently, for ball pythons, since day 1. However, all of the CH babies I purchased are from the early part of the season (April) and have been purchased from a very reputable importer/breeder.

I don't have any experience with WC's but have heard from many people that they can be quite a pain to acclimate.

just my 2 cents,
Tom

Last year I got 5 females CH 3 of those will be breeding size this fall, the other two have been pickier eaters but no more so than my CBB and I did not have any parasite problems with them. This year went together with my brother and a friend and got 50 CH didn't have trouble last year figured why not, but went with a different importer, in 2 weeks we have lost 24 of them, they only weighed between 28g and 52g and the importer shipped with an ice pack in with the snakes?!?!? I would never buy from him again but I will buy CH, just be way more carefull with whom I buy from.
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Nita Hamilton
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Ball Pythons

First off you wouldn't have any Balls if someone didn't take a chance with w/c's. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out CB are better than animals stuffed in tubs and shipped across the ocean before they even had their first shed. C/H are fine if you deal with a reputable breeder and get babies. Buying sub adult or adult W/C's is an invitation for a let down. Even if they eat chances are they won't breed for several years. I think vendors should hold on to non feeders and picky feeders instead of dumping them on newbies at shows to make a buck. This is the first year I bought C/H'ed and I'm happy as can be with them. I bought 35 girls from Ben Siegel and 80% of them took rat pups right away. The other 20% took hopper mice. Not to mention they are very nice looking animals and properly sexed. If you wait till the last minute for a deal well guess what? Yep you'll get the crappy non feeders that you read about here. JMHO, Ron
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The Crawl Space

I have three CHs from Ben - beauties all of them - great eaters and some of my favorites! The rest of the CHs i got this year I got them eating and found them new homes - they weren't nearly the quality as Ben's!

I've ended up with WCs in the past and wouldn't recommend them for anyone. After seeing the Ball Pythons in the Wild video i don't blame them one bit for being pissy! LOL But they have no business being here.

Course I know the ole argument that balls wouldn't be what they are today if it weren't for importing which is true - but at what point is it time to say enoughs enough - go ahead and get the unsual import possible new morph etc. But leave the rest where they belong - sure would drive up our CB prices if we didn't have to compete with them - imagine how much our normal clutchs would go for if there wreen't 100 imported for every 1 captive born. (BTW - I don't have exact numbers just speaking theoretically).

But that's just my opinion.
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Tosha

"One of these days i am going to wake up..look around...and realize my place looks more like "Ace Venturas"s than my own." Coldthumb

7.33.0 Ball Python (Harry and Fluffy and gang)
1.0.0 Angolan Python (Skywalker)
0.0.1 Green Tree Python
0.2.0 Feline (Pippen and Pandora)
0.0.1 Dessert Tortoise (Pope John Paul "JP"
2.2.1 Fish (1,2,3,4)
0.0.2 frogs rescued from pool skimmer
0.0.1 lizard rescued from vicious feline

Tosha,
I agree 100%... congrats on the babies over there. Ron
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The Crawl Space

Depends, depends, depends............sounds like and ad for an old folks home

Quig

I was waiting for someone to say that, lol. Good one. Ron
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The Crawl Space

LOL, sometimes I just can't stop myself. Chris must be rubbin' off on me

Quig

I bought 20 CH females from Cypress Creek this spring and all but three of them have been problem free. Of the three that were problemmatic, all were runts and never fed on their own. I have done this before and I figured if I came out with only 25% losses then I was in good shape. I know some of you will get on me with the idea of acceptable losses, but the fact of the matter is that these babies have less than a 10% survival rate in the wild to get to one year of age, I have read numbers as low as 1%. If you know what you are doing and you get animals a short time after hatching and set them up individually in good clean caging that is properly set up for temperatures and humidity, then you don't have many problems.

If you are going to go the CH route, know who you are buying from and make sure and get references.
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1.21 ball pythons
1 speckled kingsnake
1 snapping turtle
1.0 argentine horned frog
1.1 English Bulldogs