New Owner, interested in breeding

Hello!

I'm a new BP owner and I'm wanting to eventually get into breeding, once I've learned enough about it to do it responsibly. As to this I have several questions.

a) Without the probing method, what is the best and safest way to sex a snake? I've heard about popping but I'm really nervous that I might do her damage.

b) what is breeding weight for male and female respectively? Or is there a certain age that they have to be before they can breed?

c) I'm thinking about getting a mojave to breed my pinstripe too. What combinations would this create? And can children be bred back to parents?

Yea can us the piping method but I takes practice. Breeding wights.. Well I would say 800g male and 1500g female. That's minimum. Age/experience in bp will give you better success. Mojave to a pinstripe will produce normals, pins and mojos but what u will reli be shooting for is a mojave pin. Is a very nice snake. And yes offspring and siblings can b bread together!

Poping method **

B) http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...-Breeding-FAQs
C) http://www.worldofballpythons.com/wizard/

People are going to be a lot more willing to go into detail to help you out if you do the footwork and research before asking.

I LOVE when I come to a new forum to learn things and I get talked down at like I'm a child. It's my favourite thing!

I'm not talking down to you. But that first thread I posted is actually a sticky on this sub forum. Your questions have been asked time and time again, so if you do a search you'll see a bunch of threads with answers to those questions already. And then you don't have to wait for responses to your threads, because the information is already there. And with a quick google search you'll find multiple sites with breeding walkthroughs:

http://ballpython.ca/gallery/breeding/
http://www.vmsherp.com/LCBreedingBalls.htm
http://www.worldofballpythons.com/py...gius/breeding/

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Originally Posted by Sirensong26

a) Without the probing method, what is the best and safest way to sex a snake? I've heard about popping but I'm really nervous that I might do her damage.

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For ball pythons, its just probing and popping.
Popping, in my opinion is safer than probing. Probing is rather invasive and I have seen people puncture through genitals with probes.

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b) what is breeding weight for male and female respectively? Or is there a certain age that they have to be before they can breed?

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Males generally are sexually mature by a year of age, which typically correlates around 500-800grams. But males have been seen to have successfully breed as small as 200g and 2 months of age. Though it's not recommended to breed that small or young because males do go off feed to breed and they don't have a safe amount of fat stores to endure a fast at that age and size.

For females, it's a combination of things.
You'll probably hear that most consider 1500g the magic number to start breeding females.
It's not just weight to consider, but also age and body condition.
Butome girls just never exceed 1200 grams. They're just generally small animals and can breed just fine.

You have to look at body condition on top of weight. If you have a long skinny female at 1800 grams, I would not breed her. I find that to be a poor breeding candidate where as a 1200 gram short and chunky girl would be fairly better. That short chunky 1200 gram girl has better fat reserves to endure the breeding season.

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c) I'm thinking about getting a mojave to breed my pinstripe too. What combinations would this create? And can children be bred back to parents?

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Pins, Mojaves, Normals, and Jigsaws.
ANd yes, offspring can be bred back to parents.

Thanks for the responses guys! I'm wanting to get enough info before I even begin to breed, and this has certainly helped. My short term end goal is to produce a BEL, which is why I asked about breeding back to the parents. Eventually I will want to get into more breeding and perhaps selling, but I'm going to start small.:gj:

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Originally Posted by Sirensong26

Thanks for the responses guys! I'm wanting to get enough info before I even begin to breed, and this has certainly helped. My short term end goal is to produce a BEL, which is why I asked about breeding back to the parents. Eventually I will want to get into more breeding and perhaps selling, but I'm going to start small.:gj:

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It's not talking down to. BUT easy questions answered with the use of "Search function"

Breeding takes time/effort/money All which you need to have. Not being able to look up simple questions (which arnt complex for members to answer) Is a lack of a better word lazyness... I wish you luck! i just hatched out a BEL Amazing snakes