So sorry in advance as this is probably going to be kind of a long post and thanks for taking the time to read it. My current breeding plans this year is a het pied to het pied and spider to pastel. What i know so far is the het pied male is producing sperm plugs and I plan to start pairings around oct 15. I have popped the male spider but haven't seen any sperm plugs. Also when I bought my het pieds the guy said he got them from bob clark at the same time so I have reason to believe they are brother and sister as i'm assuming they are most likely from the same clutch.

My questions are:

Even though I haven't seen sperm plugs on my spider male will he still be able to breed? He was hatched august 2010 and is around 800 grams, he isn't overweight.

I have seen seen ralph davis in his videos take sperm plugs of other snakes and wipe them on the back of a female that he wants a male to breed but the male isn't seeming to want to get the job done. Has anyone done this and should I do this to the pastel female to put the male spider in the mood?

Assuming the het pieds are brother and sister and that they do produce a male pied, would it be safe to breed this male pied to his mom or would that create to much inbreeding? If the answer is yes it's not a big deal i'd just sell him and buy a new one so I could have some new blood, but keeping him would be the simple thing to do.

Also I have heard that aspen can get stuck to to the snakes parts when breeding and cause infections should I switch to newspaper or does this rarely happen?

Thanks again, any answers or tips will be greatly appreciated...