Python Passion

Python Passion believes in quality animals, not quantity.  We are reptile hobbyists and we are not in this to make profit.  This is something we do because we love the animal and breeding them is an joy to us.  Any money we bring in goes back into caging, food, equipment, etc. for our collection.  Here are the ways we are trying to make sure our animals are healthy:

We believe the key to healthy baby snakes is to begin with healthy adult snakes.  We do not house any of our adults in rack systems.  We believe that an animal should have a warm side and a cool side in order to properly regulate its body temperature; therefore, all of our adults are housed in large enclosures.  Right now, some are housed in glass tanks and some are housed in stackables as we are in the process of converting all adults' enclosures to stackables from Animal Plastics.  The stackables keep more consistent temperature and humidity than glass tanks, but are roomier than racks and allow for lighting cycles.  You will see pictures of a rack system on our site from time to time as we do use them to house babies right after hatching.  When babies hatch, there are so many to house all at once that a rack is our only option.

All baby snakes are kept for two months after hatching to establish a feeding pattern and to monitor for signs of illness.  Only when the baby establishes a regular feeding pattern and shows all signs of being healthy will we label it a "for sale" animal.

Python Passion technically began in September of 2000 with the acquisition of Tryton, a normal male ball python.  Back then, breeding snakes hadn't even crossed our minds.  However, as most reptile keepers know, ball pythons are an addiction, so we soon found ourselves wanting to give breeding a try.

In May of 2002, we bought Chloe, a normal female ball python.  We did fine with the actual breeding, and Chloe produced a clutch of 4 eggs in the spring of 2003.  We decided to let her maternally incubate the eggs; however, it is very difficult to keep the eggs at the proper temperature and humidity inside the female's tank for the entire 50-60 day duration of incubation, and the eggs perished.

We did not attempt breeding again until the 2004-2005 season.  Chloe produced another clutch in the spring of 2005 that contained 6 eggs.  We were still new at this, so we did not even attempt to candle the eggs.  We simply put them in an incubator.  The incubator, as we found out later, did not hold humidity well at all.  Again, this clutch of eggs perished.

In July of 2005, we attained another female ball python, which we named Azrielle.  We bred Tryton and Azrielle during the 2005-2006 season, and Azrielle laid a clutch of 6 eggs (3 slugs) in the spring of 2006.  Again, we had not candled the eggs, and I do not believe the "good" eggs  were fertile as it was Azrielle's first clutch.

In the 2006-2007 season, we again bred Chloe to Tryton.  In the spring of 2007, Chloe laid a clutch of 7 eggs, which all candled good.  During incubation, we had a little water drip down onto one egg, which killed it.  There was also an egg at the top of the pile that we believe dried out too much as it too did not hatch.  However, five babies did hatch from the remaining eggs in that clutch, and as a reminder to us of our first successful clutch, we kept one of the babies from that pairing.  She is known as Spaz; her pictures are available in the "Our Collection" section.

Also during the spring of 2007, we decided to try to add a morph to our collection.  However, with limited funds, our best bet was to purchase a heterozygous animal.  We had always admired the beautiful albino ball python, so this is the morph we decided to try to produce.  We found a het albino male with markings we loved, and Alchemy (as we named him) arrived in April of 2007.  With the male in our collection, we then of course needed a female.  We soon found what we were looking for and got a deal on a pair of het albinos (one male, one female) from Oklahoma.  Albionne (the female) and Algol (the male) arrived safely in October of 2007.  Since we were getting into morphs, a name needed to be given to our home-based business, so Python Passion was born.  However, both Albionne and Algol are '07 hatchlings, so it will be another year or two before we are able to produce any clutches from these.  However, Alchemy is an '06 hatchling, and . . .

We bred Alchemy to Chloe for the 2007-2008 breeding season to produce a clutch of 50% possible het albinos.  Chloe laid her clutch of 9 healthy eggs on July 7, 2008.  All nine eggs hatched, with a ratio of two males and seven females.

Azrielle was bred to Tryton for the 2007-2008 season.  Azrielle laid a clutch of 7 healthy eggs on April 29, 2008.  Five of those eggs hatched; one was a female and four were males.  Hatching began on 6/25/2008 and the final baby emerged on 6/28/2008.

We have now added a spider morph ball python to our collection; he is an '08 that we have named Mushu.  We hope to breed him during the 2009-2010 breeding season.

We have also added an '08 female orange ghost to our collection.  We have high hopes that she will breed by the 2010-2011 season; only time will tell.

In September of 2009, we added an '09 female lesser platinum ball python. In the future, we hope to add a male butter as well.  The lesser female is essential to the morphs we'd like to produce here at Python Passion, including lesser bees, perhaps some lesser ghosts, and the coveted blue-eyed leucistic.

In October of 2009 we were able to acquire a cinnamon pastel ringer ball python from Snowballs Ball Pythons.  This new addition is a female.  Currently, we are not certain what projects we want to work her into, but an albino cinnamon pastel interests us, as well as a super cinnamon.  Only time will tell in what we decide.

As for the 2008-2009 breeding season, we have  paired Alchemy to Azrielle for another clutch of 50% possible het for albino babies during the spring of 2009.  This clutch was laid on May 12, and the babies hatched between July 6 and July 8.  These babies are now available.

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