What age and weight to start breeding...

yeah i just bought a 3rd year female from him thats only 1000g and he said that if i get her up to 1200 i might be able to catch the end of this season for breeding, but he dose stress the importance of cooling and how it dose help a lot. i haven't done any breeding yet but i have one female at 2000g, and the 1000g female is now up to 1150 (full belly) so im still unsure if ill breed her, maybe if she gets to like 1400 before the end of the season.

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Originally Posted by majorleaguereptiles

A lot of large breeders will push their young females very early, typically power feed them to short obesity, they will result in small clutches with a lot of slugs. Also, not cooling females will produce slugs, but people seem to still do it anyway. Start breeding chondros and breeders will understand the importance of age and cooling when it comes to healthy breeding. That's my personal opinion, but you see some of the biggest breeders in the world not, so maybe I'm wrong.

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where do you get your info from? last year I bred 3 females, only 1 produced slugs, I didn't cool any of them. so your statement is false. I'm sure you will find 23980493 other people who have also had a healthy clutch of eggs without cooling.

To the OP, to play it safe, like everyone says 1500 grams, but there are people who have no problems breeding at 1200 grams, and I've talked to someone who bred a 950 gram female and she produced 4 healthy eggs (so they claim).

basically what it comes down to is the less they weigh, the more of a risk you take of having problems and they tend to have less eggs, but again, I've personally seen a 1300 gram girl lay 7 healthy eggs + 1 slug. so its not an exact science by any means. my 2000 gram girl only laid 5 eggs last year. but i forget who did a study, but basically reported that girls that weighed less than XXXX grams didn't lay eggs very often and produced smaller clutches if they did than the girls that weighed more.

o and also, males, as soon as you see sperm, they can breed, there is no weight or age, or very much risk, my male lesser was breeding at 450 and was producing sperm before that. our pastel hypo didn't start breeding until around 800 grams, not that he wasn't producing sperm, he just couldn't exactly figure things out until then lol. so their all different.

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Originally Posted by OhhWatALoser

where do you get your info from? last year I bred 3 females, only 1 produced slugs, I didn't cool any of them. so your statement is false. I'm sure you will find 23980493 other people who have also had a healthy clutch of eggs without cooling.

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I never said you can't have healthy clutches without cooling. I said you will have more slugs when you don't cool. Ralph Davis doesn't cool his snakes. He avoids R.I. in doing so, but suffers from continued infertile clutches and slugs. I didn't just say this out of thin air... define ignorance before you start talking to people like that.

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Originally Posted by RichieBoo

Hi, what size can u start breeding at..is it around 1500grams for females and 600 for males..thanks

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Females can be a minimum of 1200 grams but should be quite a bit higher and around 3 years old. Males can breed much earlier and have been successful breeders at around 500 grams. On both the weights should be much higher. Females 1800 grams and higher and males 800.

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Originally Posted by majorleaguereptiles

A lot of large breeders will push their young females very early, typically power feed them to short obesity, they will result in small clutches with a lot of slugs.

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Where do you get your information. I do not cool and its never been a problem.

Males whenever they produce sperm plug, show interest and I feel comfortable with them breeding.

Females I personally prefer to breed large female however it varies on various factor.

While I would not breed a 18 months old female below 1500 grams, I will breed a 1200 grams females if she is 3 or 4 years.

Everyone does it a bit deferentially it's a learning process to see what works for you and your animals, it's also about being patient and remember because they are proper size or age does not mean they will breed either.

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Originally Posted by mdjudson

Where do you get your information. I do not cool and its never been a problem.

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I get my information from LIFE. Large breeders like Ralph loses hundreds of eggs a year from not cooling. Breeders who have tried this method for a year like Steve Roussis will agree it greatly decreased fertility. At the SD Zoo we stress the importance of a cooling when breeding reptiles because of fertility. Without it, many females don't produce. Most of the time where people live, they are cooling without changing temperatures anyway just because the ambient house temp drops. Cooling is a a part of nature. What do you think stimulates reptiles to breed in the wild? Photo period, rainfall/humidity, barometric pressure, and temperature. CHANGE the elements and you will INCREASE your fertility. The reasons why certain breeders don't is because the risk of R.I. will increase during the stress of breeding. It's a choice, I'm just stating facts.

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Originally Posted by majorleaguereptiles

I get my information from LIFE. Large breeders like Ralph loses hundreds of eggs a year from not cooling. Breeders who have tried this method for a year like Steve Roussis will agree it greatly decreased fertility. At the SD Zoo we stress the importance of a cooling when breeding reptiles because of fertility. Without it, many females don't produce. Most of the time where people live, they are cooling without changing temperatures anyway just because the ambient house temp drops. Cooling is a a part of nature. What do you think stimulates reptiles to breed in the wild? Photo period, rainfall/humidity, barometric pressure, and temperature. CHANGE the elements and you will INCREASE your fertility. The reasons why certain breeders don't is because the risk of R.I. will increase during the stress of breeding. It's a choice, I'm just stating facts.

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Your statement is wrong and is not a fact. Many breeders do not drop temps for breeding. Many more breeders do. They both have been known to have slugs. You can not say as fact that by not droping your temps you will be more likely to produce slugs than if you do drop temps.
Someone recently posted that sense he stoped palpating he has stoped producing slugs. This does not make it a fact that if you stop palpating you will stop throwing slugs.

Also unless Ralph is a liar then your facts are wrong also concerning his breeding practices.

From Ralphs web journal:


BALL_PYTHON_BREEDING_RECIPE

I wrote this in my journal entry for January 31, 2003............I copied it over to this section so it is easier to find.......:)

I have received hundreds of emails each week from all of you....................and I have noticed many of you are following my journal day by day...............and breeding your snakes the same method that I'm doing.............as far as resting and feeding the breeders ..............I get the "breeding temps" question a lot.............so I'm gonna note what I do as far as temps here for all of you ................I start breeding in October............in the first week of October I begin the breeding temps...............and I do it like this..............my heat in the off season is always set at 95 degrees...........and my heat in the breeding season is also set at 95 degrees .............I breed from October till the end of March............that entire time I set the day time temps to 95 degrees and the night time temps to 82 degrees................this is the temp of the heat tape.........right on the tape.............95 day...............82 night..............that's it.............now what I also do is manipulate the lights...............my very first night drop in October is set to start at 7 pm.............that is when the HELIX switches to the 82 degree night time drop................and that is when ALL the lights go out in the room ..............I do this for a few weeks...................then as the winter days get shorter .............I turn the lights and the day heat off at 6 pm...............the when "day light savings time" kicks in ..........I shut the heat and lights off at 5 pm......................5 pm is the final drop of light and heat .................I work my way down to this, and it stays that way until March 31st..................so basically my snakes are going into the 82 degree night time drop and the darkness at 5pm from the end of November until the end of March.............it's that simple.................and it is easy ................I just slowly bring the snakes into longer cooler nights...................in the off season they are used to 95 degrees 24/7...............lights on at 7 am and off at 9 pm.............at the height of breeding season .......November through March............the lights and heat are on at 7 am...................and off at 5 pm................so that is 10 hours of heat and light.................and 14 hours of night time temp 82 degree tape and darkness.................that's when the breeding happens..............at night................My actual air temps during the day in the room are around 80 to 82 degrees during breeding season and almost 88 to 90 degrees in the off season................my air temps at night during the breeding season are in the low 70's...............so at night ..........there is 70 to 75 degree air temp............82 degree heat tape temp............and 14 hours of darkness..............it works like a charm for me..................the best part is that at night when the lights go off and the heat drops down.............the entire room slowly gets cooler .............everything works perfect.................then in the morning when the lights come on and the heat tape turns up to 95 degrees..............the room slowly gets warmer..................it is noticeable to me...............and majorly noticeable to the ball pythons..............it's a season..............it's "making weather" in your own basement...............that will be another lesson..............."how to make cold fronts in your home".................the snakes go nuts for those.


So........ You can not say for a Fact that not droping temps causes infertitlity in Ball Pythons.

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Originally Posted by majorleaguereptiles

I never said you can't have healthy clutches without cooling. I said you will have more slugs when you don't cool.

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...did you read what you wrote?

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Originally Posted by majorleaguereptiles

Also, not cooling females will produce slugs, but people seem to still do it anyway.

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Originally Posted by majorleaguereptiles

Ralph Davis doesn't cool his snakes. He avoids R.I. in doing so, but suffers from continued infertile clutches and slugs. I didn't just say this out of thin air... define ignorance before you start talking to people like that.

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lol? ummm...Ignorance is purposely being uninformed? I don't see what that has to do with anything. you do have 2 contradicting posts tho.