Buy a Python

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Tim Cole with Austin Reptile Service and I've been keeping reptiles amphibians for over forty years and we're here to talk about buying a Python. There's several ways you can go about that. One, obviously, is the Internet. Drawback to that is you're not going to have a real good feel for the health of the animal. One of the ways I like to see people go out and buy a snake is go to one of the local reptile expos. That way you can meet the person that bred and produced that snake. You can examine the snake for ourself to make sure it's in good health, it's the size you want, it's the sex you want. Hopefully the person that's selling it to you can accurately sex it. As far as health issues go, you want to make sure they don't have any parasites. Snake mites can be common for somebody who's not taking good care of their animals. If it's a wild caught snake, especially Ball pythons, quite often they'll have ticks on them. That's something you'll want to avoid also. But, buying a captive born python from a breeder is definitely the way to go. Keep in mind what species of python your getting. Children's pythons, Spotted pythons, Ball pythons, they all stay rather small and easy to manage. But your bigger pythons like Burmese pythons, reticulated pythons, African rock pythons, they get much larger and take a fair amount of space and experience in dealing with these animals."