how to get ball pythons to lock up

So this is my first year breeding and I have a pastel X spider and a het pied X het pied. The pastel X spider pair are both younger, spider is 2010 800 gram male, and the pastel is 2009 1250 gram female, and they are locking up like crazy. However my het pieds haven't locked up yet.

The male het is 2008 950 grams the female is 2008 1350 grams. What are some things I can do to get them to lock up? I have a normal male thats about to shed and I've heard you can like put the shed in the females cage so the male like gets jealous? What else can I do to get these guys going? I was trying to get the sperm plugs out of the male normal to put in the female like ralph davis does but didn't have any luck getting them out.

Any tips, advice, or suggestion would be greatly appreciated. thanks guys

im not sure if this works for bp's but it does for scrubs, take away the hot spot so the entire enclosure is one temperature, hot spots are known to completly distract males while females stay at the cold end, therefore they never breed. other than that maybe just wait it out? if snakes dont want to breed, they wont, and if they do, they will, so i imagine that more time is your best bet.

that or you can duct-tape their cloaca's together lol, they'll figure it out eventually, right?

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Originally Posted by cmack91

im not sure if this works for bp's but it does for scrubs, take away the hot spot so the entire enclosure is one temperature, hot spots are known to completly distract males while females stay at the cold end, therefore they never breed. other than that maybe just wait it out? if snakes dont want to breed, they wont, and if they do, they will, so i imagine that more time is your best bet.

that or you can duct-tape their cloaca's together lol, they'll figure it out eventually, right?

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I agree did you do a cool down?
I know some people have luck with cool downs and some people dont use the method and are just fine.
I wont go into detail about cool downs im assuming you know about it. But just let us know if you need info on it.

Im in my first year as well and pairing will start for me on the 1st after a month of cool down.

I also think your pastel female is too young for breeding. IMO 3 years of age min no exceptions. Just because they CAN breed at 2 doesnt mean they SHOULD. They just dont reach full sexual maturity until 3 years of age. By waiting you reduce the risk of losing your female to egg binding. But this is just my 2 cents.

Good luck with those locks!

I didn't cool down because my room stays at around 70 degrees during the day and drops into the 65 range at night so I leave a heat spot at 93 for these guys since the room is so cold

Another good trick is to mist them with water from a spray bottle. This seems to turn things up a little. It gets the pharamones going.

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Originally Posted by cmack91

that or you can duct-tape their cloaca's together lol, they'll figure it out eventually, right?

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Awesome... :rofl::rofl::rofl:

A little love music won't hurt any either....

if they are ready they will go. If you had another female you could put the 2 females an male together and hell lock up with one of them. I use this trick when i get a picky girl and it seems to work about 80 percent of the time. But if she feels shes not ready she will not breed and or produce eggs for ya.

some will put another males\females shed in the tub with the pair there trying to breed,some will rub another males sperm plugs onto the females back to make the other male jealous.

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Originally Posted by bigmike

A little love music won't hurt any either....

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Play some Barry Whitesnake.