Confused newbie looking for answers

[Woma_Wild]

Firstly,I"m sorry if this post is in the wrong section but I didn't know where else to put this.

Prior to getting my python, I did a LOT of reading about which one would be good for me.
I settled on a woma. A decision that I don't regret - she is a perfect.

My problem is that all the material I've read, I seem to get different answers and hence, finding things confusing and stressful because I worry that I might be doing something wrong. eg/ I was told to buy a heat rock then I read here that they are dangerous.

There is a wealth of information on this site but it's not easy searching thru it all when a certain question or problem arises.

What I'd love to read about are the basics. A section where breeders could answer a few questions like temperature requirements, how to set up an enclosure for specific pythons, feeding routine, temperament of the pythons, etc. In other words, a section for each species would be so helpful.

just a thought. might eliminate having 30 threads about the same topic. I know for one that I'd be thrilled to see a Woma breeder share his/her experience .

 

[saintanger]

yes that is a great idea hopefully there would be less questions about the same thing and it would be great for newbies.

i remember wen i got my first reptile, this site was not even available, there was nothing for me and i struggled as my parents couldn't help me either. but i learnt from my mistakes and am still keeping reptiles and its much easier these days as we can jump on the net and find all the answers.

 

[TheChondroCharm]

http://www.aussiepythons.com/forum/...sion-42/woma-care-sheet-needed-please-190642/

Theres a few caresheets in this thread

 

[Stuart]

http://www.aussiepythons.com/forum/general-reptile-discussion-42/tips-newbies-thread-143946/. <- Click me

 

[Gruni]

The others beat me to the links. As far as the heat rock goes I know people who have used them for years without incident and have read about others with critical failures. Like any electrical device you need to keep an eye on them. Check them regularly like when ever you clean the enclosure and as a precaution run them on a thermostat. It is one of those personal choice things where you won't get one right answer. People don't like heat mats much either but again I know people personallly who have used them for years and I used one for my first enclosure without issue. My new build I decided I could do a better job that blends in with my buid using a heat chord and tile setup.

Like with dog training, or other animal husbandry there is no one right or wrong way to do stuff and much of it is built on personal experience and comfort zones. The best thing you can do is rsearch what your snake needs as far as climate, enclosure size etc and find what works for you. Simon at Reptiles Direct spoke to me the other day about my thermostat set up and although I am doing something quite diferent to how he tells people to do it he can see how it will work to achieve my aims.

Good luck and enjoy, womas are wonderful snakes and if I were to have a collection I would add one as a top 4 wish list.

 

[jbest]

http://www.southernxreptiles.com/Article PDFs/woma_lr.pdf

great article as are most of them on the southern x reptiles website

 

[Zeusy]

There is the mentioned newb's thread which has ALOT of info in it but its really hard to read through and search for what you want and is fairly generalised. Almost every other forum i have been a member of has a newb section where people, like myself, can ask questions without being flamed as i feel asking questions anywhere else here results in the usual "this has been asked before" response. Posting in the newbie thread usually takes along time to get any response as it is "pinned" so few people notice when someone has posted in it. Using the search function does not always net the required results as searching "entire posts" yields way to many results and searching titles only yields too few depending on how you spell your search terms. Sorry, this has just been my experience.

 

[Woma_Wild]

There is the mentioned newb's thread which has ALOT of info in it but its really hard to read through and search for what you want and is fairly generalised. Almost every other forum i have been a member of has a newb section where people, like myself, can ask questions without being flamed as i feel asking questions anywhere else here results in the usual "this has been asked before" response. Posting in the newbie thread usually takes along time to get any response as it is "pinned" so few people notice when someone has posted in it. Using the search function does not always net the required results as searching "entire posts" yields way to many results and searching titles only yields too few depending on how you spell your search terms. Sorry, this has just been my experience.

which is why I posted this thread. It was only a thought - if experienced ppl were to have a thread showing their enclosures, explaining correct temps, etc.
At the end of the day, it's the animals that would benefit from this info.

 

[Zeusy]

Completely agree with you which is why I posted what I did hoping that mods/admins will see it and think about it. I did post it in the suggestions section. They could have a newb thread for each species with info specific to them etc. trying to search for something like temperature for a JCP. I searched "jungle temp","jungle temps" & "jungle temperature" and found only a couple of results total, each with different answers. If I could have simply gone to a newb section which contains such info, it would have been easier. A lot of newbs will try and search and not enter the right parameters to get the info they need so they end up posting somewhere else. In other words, I fully support what you are doing here.

 

[TheChondroCharm]

Completely agree with you which is why I posted what I did hoping that mods/admins will see it and think about it. I did post it in the suggestions section. They could have a newb thread for each species with info specific to them etc. trying to search for something like temperature for a JCP. I searched "jungle temp","jungle temps" & "jungle temperature" and found only a couple of results total, each with different answers. If I could have simply gone to a newb section which contains such info, it would have been easier. A lot of newbs will try and search and not enter the right parameters to get the info they need so they end up posting somewhere else. In other words, I fully support what you are doing here.

how about instead of 100 species threads that has a lot of information doubling up and a lot of repetitiveness taking up space and time to write the mods add to the current newbie thread a section devoted to terms to search and what they mean. teaching newbies the correct terms to use, what terms will turn up what results and so on.

teaching a newbie what "husbandry" means rather then them just searching "woma temps, jungle enclosure" etc it broadens their ability to find information if they have a herp-dictionary/thesaurus as such at their disposal.

not only would that be much quicker then making species threads but it would teach newbies a lot. we all had to learn and research on our own and a lot of older herpers had trail and error as their research.

thoughts on this idea?

 

[Zeusy]

hmm, but still has the same issue. I just tried searching "jungle husbandry" and got 0 returns on titles only and too many which have titles that dont really seem like they would contain the answer straight out. I'm all for reading and researching. I read and have learnt so much from this forum and will continue to do so but feel like if i want to ask a question im not 100% on and have tried searching but i know it would have been answered, if i do ask, ill get posts of "this has been answered before"
Searching titles only yield threads which provide more detail in what your searching for but alot of titles are worded so this wouldnt be the case. Maybe having people title threads more clearly would be an answer as searching entire posts can bring up so so many threads that aren't really related to what one maybe searching for.
I know it would be an annoying section to mod coz you would need to keep cleaning house but i think most newbs would feel more confident in asking newb questions in such an area. They could search that specfic section and maybe find the answers they are looking for more rapidly.
This is only a suggestion to try and reduce the repetitive questions in the other parts of the forums.

 

[ronhalling]

All that information should be given to you by the breeder you got the Woma from and if he did not offer the advise then it was up to you to get it from them, who better to tell you everything you need to know about any given species than the people who breed them, they have taken all the hard work and brain drain from the prospective buyers and there is no excuse for not walking away with not only the snake but all it's husbandry and feeding needs. This is why i am dead against pet shops in NSW selling snakes, 90% of the young people in the shops don't know their knee from their elbow and will be causing alot of unnecessary stress on alot of snakes with their lack of husbandry knowledge and giving out wrong information, forums like this are gr8 for bringing the people of the herp world together and discussing day to day problems but in my opinion are not a swap for my first point, don't get me wrong alot of the guys here have forgotton almost as much we the whole know collectively, there are also what i would term experts in their field that i have nothing but respect for but it still does not replace that coalface knowledge that the breeder you get your animal from can impart to you........................................Ron

 

[Stuart]

.

 

[Woma_Wild]

All that information should be given to you by the breeder you got the Woma from and if he did not offer the advise then it was up to you to get it from them, who better to tell you everything you need to know about any given species than the people who breed them, they have taken all the hard work and brain drain from the prospective buyers and there is no excuse for not walking away with not only the snake but all it's husbandry and feeding needs. This is why i am dead against pet shops in NSW selling snakes, 90% of the young people in the shops don't know their knee from their elbow and will be causing alot of unnecessary stress on alot of snakes with their lack of husbandry knowledge and giving out wrong information, forums like this are gr8 for bringing the people of the herp world together and discussing day to day problems but in my opinion are not a swap for my first point, don't get me wrong alot of the guys here have forgotton almost as much we the whole know collectively, there are also what i would term experts in their field that i have nothing but respect for but it still does not replace that coalface knowledge that the breeder you get your animal from can impart to you........................................Ron

This was the first thing I did. The seller was going to e-mail me but 2 days later, I had not heard from him and I have made several attempts to contact them. I'm not a child purchasing from a pet shop. Perhaps making a purchase from an Expo was not the best way to go. Too may ppl around and buyer hasn't got the time to answer all your questions.

sorry that I posted this thread. I thought that experts would be only to happy to share their knowledge with ppl like myself , trying to learn so that we can provide the best possible care for our animals.

 

[dangles]

Plenty of books out there that can be purchased that goes through everything that is needed. My first python was a jungle, before even looking at pythons I had bought "keeping and breeding Australian carpets" and furthered my research through that. Seen plenty of books on womas too

 

[Woma_Wild]

Plenty of books out there that can be purchased that goes through everything that is needed. My first python was a jungle, before even looking at pythons I had bought "keeping and breeding Australian carpets" and furthered my research through that. Seen plenty of books on womas too

a couple of books have a small section on womas but unlike Carpets, I've seen no books on womas, but if you know of one by all means, please let me know.

 

[dangles]

Never looked st titles but definitely had womas on the front. A breeders perspective from southern x reptiles http://www.southernxreptiles.com/Article PDFs/woma_lr.pdf shows cage layout heating etc

 

[Gruni]

This was the first thing I did. The seller was going to e-mail me but 2 days later, I had not heard from him and I have made several attempts to contact them. I'm not a child purchasing from a pet shop. Perhaps making a purchase from an Expo was not the best way to go. Too may ppl around and buyer hasn't got the time to answer all your questions.

sorry that I posted this thread. I thought that experts would be only to happy to share their knowledge with ppl like myself , trying to learn so that we can provide the best possible care for our animals.

It's the usual problem with forum posts, people don't think about how blunt and sometimes confronting posts sound when read off a screen no matter how well intentioned the information may have been. One of your starting points should be a bok by Mike Swan called 'Keeping and breeding Australian pythons' as it will give you a lot of the basics about temps etc. Like I said earlier after that a lot of your set up will be what yu are comfortable with and what works for you, just take on some of the concerns and consider how to allow for them (as I said run a heat rock with a thermostat). My first setup was run on timers instead of thermostats and a bit of monitoring and I had zero problems but others would say I was way out of line... while there are a number of people on here who have and do run the same system. The two links posted at the start should be a big help.

As for Jungle husbandry grab a book called 'Complete Carpet Python' which covers all of the morelias really well and was written by some of the guys who are regulars on here, as well as looking at the book by Swan.

 

[J-A-X]

People have forgotten about our WIKI section

Here is your basic husbandry

http://www.aussiepythons.com/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions

There are also sections on:
species profiles
Glossary of common terminology
Vet list
Licensing information
Import / export information

People are welcome to add to it