Wobbles the Ball Python

Wobbles is a male Bumblebee morph (pastel x spider) ball python. Before his last meal he weighed about 510 grams, he is about 3 feet long. With ball pythons, the females tend to be much larger than the males. He is from a 2012 clutch, I purchased him from Outback Reptiles at the Northern Virginia Reptile Expo in Manassas, VA on December 8 2012. Outback had received him as a trade in from another breeder so I don't know his lineage.

Wobble's is currently living in a 55 gallon screen top terrarium. I use shredded/ground cocoanut fiber bedding in his tank. It is less likely to become impacted than other beddings if accidentally ingested, though it tends to stick to prey if the prey is wet (from defrosting or from snake saliva) so I feed Wobbles in a separate bedding-free tank to avoid all chance of accidental ingestion and impaction.
He's eating 2, occasionally 3, large retired breeder sized mice every 5-7 days. Normally he would be eating 1 small rat every 5-7 days but I ran out of rats and had a bag of 25 large mice.. I definitely recommend switching to rats as soon as your snake can handle them, they typically have a lot more nutrients than mice (which can sometimes be just skin and bones) as well as a better meat-fat ratio. In my experience, ball pythons tend to hit a growth spurt shortly after they make the switch from mice to rats.

Wobbles on the day I got him

Wobbles at about 8 or 9 months old