Could large clutch sizes be hereditary?

Kind of a strange question but I'm just curious if anyone knows.
I bought my butter female from a friend of mine and his butter female (mines mother) Always lays huge clutches. She's consistently a 9,10,11 egg dropper. Could this pass on to mine? ( let's hope so :P )

Guess only real way to find out is when she gets big enough to lay!

Possibly. It would probably be one of those things that is more of a tendency instead of a something that is predictably passed along. There are many other factors that are at least as important, such as size, age, feeding schedule, breeding every year vs having years off, ect...

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Originally Posted by Jay Mechtly

Possibly. It would probably be one of those things that is more of a tendency instead of a something that is predictably passed along. There are many other factors that are at least as important, such as size, age, feeding schedule, breeding every year vs having years off, ect...

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Ahhh I see, thanks Jay :gj:

I know size is often a big factor, and continous breeding is as well. I have a 4000 gram girl I bought this year that is an 11 egger in 2011, My spider girl was 3000 grams and she gave 9 in 2011, and 6 in 2013. But she went off feed really early in the 13 season. My 1500 gram het. axanthic girl gave 4. I think weight and size has more to do with it than genetics but I could be wrong.

I think follicular growth(clutch size) is better based off of the size (weight/girth) of the mother snake. A large snake will either produce lots of regular sized eggs or fewer larger eggs. As far as heredity goes I doubt there is a correlation involving clutch size. But hopefully a large snake with produce large young. That's what I would hope for .

I've heard of a situation like this before. A guy that I know has a female that is massive and lays huge clutches every year. Then he noticed that her offspring that he has kept as holdbacks are also very big girls and lay huge clutches as well. So it may not be hereditary for all of them, but maybe it is similar to how some families in humans are prone to having twins.

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Originally Posted by TheSnakeGuy

I think follicular growth(clutch size) is better based off of the size (weight/girth) of the mother snake. A large snake will either produce lots of regular sized eggs or fewer larger eggs. As far as heredity goes I doubt there is a correlation involving clutch size. But hopefully a large snake with produce large young. That's what I would hope for .

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I know Brandon Osbourne has a big female he calls Big Bertha, Ill have to find the exact post but shes obviously big hence the name. She lays a lot of eggs and the hatchlings come out weighing around 85-90ish grams I do believe.

Here the link to Big Bertha producing large snakes, and this is consistent with her.

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...15#post2129015

Size and weight tend to produce more eggs. Genetics which are linebred to produce larger sizes and weights will produce more eggs. This is the case with the Volta and "subsaharan" localities but could easily be bred for in captivity as well with artificial selection.