Talk to me about breeding Deserts...

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Originally Posted by angllady2

I too am extremely interested to find out what is KNOWN about breeding deserts. I do see them for sale so the babies have to come from somewhere.

I have a genuine interest in breeding deserts if I can find out beyond doubt it is a viable endeavor. Robyn's post raises some hopes for me. Certainly it might require more effort and finesse to successfully breed deserts than other morphs, but a serious breeder would be willing to put in the extra effort. I know I would be willing to put in whatever effort was necessary if it meant I could raise these animals with a decent degree of success.

Hopefully some of the other breeders who have managed to breed these animals consistently will come forward and share any tips and/or tricks they have found to work for them.

Gale

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the babies are coming steady from males. The breed like any other ball. It's the females that have everyone asking questions.

I would like to thank PE for doing alot of explaining and sharing the info they have!! It does make alot more sense now and puts a desert project back on the map for me.

Even if females turn out to tend to be near-impossible to produce eggs from.. Is that going to turn anyone away from the morph?

Frankly I'd be just as happy to produce some pet-only animals that look like $15,000 breeding projects and get them in the hands of people who just enjoy having the snakes for the sake of having them.

And using males to produce even more beautiful animals :D

I was actually gonna buy a pair not to long ago before I heard about the issues people were having with them. I opted for the champagne instead. At this point I don't think I would consider them for my collection since they still cost quite a bit and it would take so long to get the females ready. I hate it turned out the way it has with them so far they do make great looking combos.

So it's kinda crazy that in the short time that deserts have been being bred that all the combos have been made by males.

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Originally Posted by Thesnakepitt

the babies are coming steady from males. The breed like any other ball. It's the females that have everyone asking questions.

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Well, DUH!!

Gale

Rather than re-post exactly what I wrote on the locked thread (here), I'll expand on it, since Robin's information got me thinking ...

Wolfy-hound, I tend to doubt that necropsy would show much (though I could be wrong), because if there is a problem, I can't help but wonder if it's hormonal (and not anatomical). I wonder if desert females could be deficient in one of the many hormones and receptors than controls vitellogenesis (egg maturation and production) and parturition. That could explain why they seem to have a high percentage of slugs, and why they seem to have a higher instance of egg binding relative to other morph females.

I don't know why I didn't think of that before with caramel females ... It would be interesting to see if some kind of an exogenous hormone protocol could increase their fertility. (Now, whether or not the community would be accepting of breeders doing that as a matter of course is another issue entirely ...)

Also, I don't think Robin's theory about temperatures is all that bad of one. Just to pull something out of my ... The air, I could pretend that maybe the desert mutation makes these animals slightly deficient in heat-shock proteins, making them more susceptible to heat stress. There are lots of things going on with mutations that we don't understand; I don't think it's too much of a reach to think that's a possibility anyway.

That's why I also specified blood testing for hormones and other blood "ingrediants" that might be related to fertility, in addition to minute exams of the whole reproductive system(in the case of euthanasia or accidental death-egg binding). Any sort of scientific testing whether gross necropsy(probably not too useful), lab necropsy(more useful) and/or blood testing(probably most useful) would most likely be helpful, since if nothing else, it could rule out various things.