How to teach someone to care for BPs?

Here's my situation. I've been involved with Ball Pythons off and on for years. I got seriously involved once before, but sold off my small collection because I was being deployed and had no way to care for the snakes.

Well, the bug never goes away. I have a decent collection started now (pastel vanilla, bee, clown, axanthic, pastave and lesserbee all females). Anyways, I'm coming up on another deployment and do not want to sell my girls. The wifey is around this time, hadn't found her before the last rip to the desert haha. Anyways, she isn't extremely comfortable around them but has agreed to learn and take over once I leave.

The problem is, I learned through trial and error through my middle school/high school days on all sorts of snakes and lizards. I've been through it all with dozens of species of reptiles. She doesn't have the wiggle room here with the money I've put in, but she does have time (roughly a year). Do I have her just shadow me and then start doing it herself under my guidance until she is comfortable enough to handle it on her own? A year is a long time, but I don't know if she'll come across all the little problems balls can have over a 6 month period.

Any advice?

Micheal I would do like you said and just have her shadow you and start doing things for herself when she fells comfortable with it. And I would also get her to start an account here and become familiar with it. I have only been raising ball pythons for a a short time and have found other members of this site to be extremely helpful when I have questions about them. Good luck.

Hey Mike,

Yeah I think you're on the right track. I'm in the military too. My wife has always known deployment could come up and was always supportive of my collection. I'll have her shadow me, as you put it. I also keep her in the loop with the animals. I even inspired her to get her own snake so she gets more experience with the hobby and husbandry. I also think it couldn't hurt to take some time to write a SOP, if you will, so she has something to reference in different situations.

Do you know anyone else in the hobby you trust that is local that she could contact if necessary? In addition to a vet of course....

Sounds like you have some time to get her comfortable and confident with the animals. I think it will work out well....

Take care Mike

I have a few buddies close. I know Raphy of MaBalls.net pretty well, and one of his close friends who I'm friends with also. I've talked a lot with both of them, always helpful and cool guys so I'm sure they'd have no problems. I was even thinking about pre-bagging all the rats for feedings that she'd need to make it easy. But I'm sure if I wrote a SOP like you said, and made sure I had the different sizes labeled well she wouldn't have a problem.

What branch/career field are you in?

pre-bagged dinners is a great idea! my wife would appreciate that!

sent you a PM.

Mikester. It can be done! I just dropped 30yrs of experience in mine's lap... I had her shadow daily for months.

Then, all of a sudden, boom, she is running the show dude! And, the rodent show too. She ran from snake's 2 yrs ago, now, we brawl over who's is who's.. lol.

She's got it wrapped dude. You can do it!

If there's ever any hiccups, you can have her reach out to us at anytime my brother. PM, email.. Any damn day for the team, hit us up.

That's why I love you Tom haha. Bought a couple Rosy Boas from you like 2 years ago and you're still so helpful and so ready to lend a hand. One of the reasons you're on my very short 100% trusted list.

Glad to know you had success, hopefully the little lady picks it up fast.

Old thread, but the wife did great! In fact, I think the snakes knew there was somebody else caring for them and were all on their best behavior. She never missed a feeding day, and literally none of my snakes skipped a meal for her. What luck she had, 3 months and not a single hiccup.

Rockstar! Welcome back to sunny MA