



If you speak to any breeder or keeper of ball pythons they will tell you the importance of record keeping. It is essential to keep records of different aspects of your snakes such as feeding and breeding and some keepers even go as far as keeping data on sheds and defecation's. It is so crucial because it allows you to: gain an understanding of your animals and their individual personalities, ensure their health and well being and if you produce anything extraordinary you know exactly where it came from. In this article I am going to go through what I keep records of, how I do it and my reasoning.









Tub labels













When I first started out I used to write the morph, sex and date on the front of the tub in a whiteboard pen. This was an easy and simple tub label which I have no problems with in terms of practicality; it just doesn’t look very professional! So when I moved into the new snake room recently, I decided to purchase a label maker and write the same information on a label and stick it onto the front of the tub. This looks much more professional but I have found it to be quite frustrating when it comes to cleaning. This is because when I clean I put the snake in a fresh spare tub so I can deep clean their dirty tub, I found this is just a much more efficient and hygienic way of cleaning rather than taking the snake out, cleaning the tub then just putting it straight back in the same one.









So when I want to move the label from one tub onto another it leaves a sticky residue which is a pain to get off and the more you take off the label and put it on another tub, the less it sticks! So then it just looks rubbish anyway. Because of this, I am currently looking into different methods of tub labelling and the one I am most interested in is magnetic labels! I first saw these in one of Billy’s videos over at Mutation Creation and they seem to be the perfect solution to the problem I was having. However, this does only work if





your racks are metal of course; thankfully mine are! You simply buy magnetic tape to put in the label maker rather than paper or plastic. This is slightly more expensive but worth it considering how much more efficient it would make my cleaning days!





Feeding Records













In my collection at the moment I still use traditional pen and paper to record my feedings. I don’t have enough snakes to make this a problem yet, but I have no doubt it will be difficult soon haha! Each snake has its own page in a notebook and I just write the date, the prey item I fed and whether it ate or not. If there is a clear





reason why it didn’t eat, for example shedding, then I would make a note of this as well. When the collection does get too big to record this on paper, my plan is to use Reptile Scan as it seems to be the best software for record keeping available in the UK at the moment. With babies, each one gets a feeding card which is just a chart that shows the feeding dates, prey sizes and any additional notes.





Breeding Records









When breeding ball pythons there is so many different pieces of data that need to be recorded so it’s important to stay organised and consistent throughout the season. When recording locks, I simply write the data and whether I saw a lock or not in whiteboard pen on the tub. Then when it comes to cleaning the tub, I transfer this data onto a spreadsheet. This





might seem a bit OTT but I find it useful to see how many times each female was locked before each stage in follicular development. This gives me a better understanding of the snakes and it is this knowledge that will hopefully make me more efficient and successful in breeding!













Next thing is palpation, as I don’t have an ultrasound yet I palpate my females every month or so just to get an idea of where they are in the breeding cycle. This is quite difficult to record as there is no figures for how the follicles feel, so I just draw a circle on the tub of a rough guess as to how big they feel! This might seem crazy but it





works for me! Arguably the most important pieces of data when breeding ball pythons is ovulation dates and post ovulation shed dates. This is because it gives you an idea of when eggs are coming! This information is again written on the front of the tub in whiteboard pen and later transferred into a spreadsheet.









Finally, when eggs are finally laid, I have a spreadsheet that I printed out and I write in pen all the necessary information such as the parents, the number of locks seen, the number of eggs and slugs, the date I had her due for, the actual lay date and the weight of the female after she lays. These are all important pieces of data and having





them on paper in a table allows me to compare the information and learn more about the habits of the snakes when breeding. Finally, when it comes to keeping the information of the clutches and the babies, I usually just write the information on the tub which goes in the incubator. This way the data stays with the clutch and I can’t lose anything! When the clutch hatches, I put all of the information into a spreadsheet and give each baby an ID number. The spreadsheet is just a big table which includes the parents of the clutch, the date it was laid, the ID number and morph of each baby and the number of eggs in the clutch.





Here are some of the different spreadsheets/cards that I use to record all my data:





Feeding Card









Clutch Record Sheet:







