Breeding rack question

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Originally Posted by PhoenixGate

How can you get away with not lowering the temps? They need some sort of environmental trigger to breed.

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Enough people breed year-round that I am willing to say, no, they don't. I do not lower my temps intentionally (although I do have a small ambient drop of about 3 degrees in room temperature) and never will. There is no reason to with this species, and I would just as soon not risk the possibility of RI.

My hunch, is that the two environmental factors acting on my personal snakes are the lowered humidity that comes with turning on the central heating, and sharp changes in barometric pressure. I keep a barometer in my studio -- the most intense breeding correlates with barometric change, especially the falling pressure of an incoming storm. Realistically, male will court a female any time of year. If she is in condition, or even just mature enough, that's usually all she needs to begin building follicles.

We drop temps from ~89F hot spot to 84F for our females in prime time pairing season (like now). No night drops. Our facility is climate controlled to a stable 72F- 75F ambient year around. Breeder males will stay at 89F when not breeding to help digestion when they are on feed really well (as will babies). We drop males to 87F during breeding season to keep their sperm potent.

Out of the 99 eggs we produced from 17 females we only had 7 eggs not go to term. A first year 0.1 Albino laid 3 perfect looking eggs that went bad in 2 weeks, a 100% Het Pied that laid 2 slugs, and 0.2 Pastels that each had one egg go bad after a few weeks. We would call a 93% hatch rate pretty good :gj:

Ask around.... I have heard of a few people that did not drop temps at all last season and had an increased number of slugs from their females.

We are only going off our experience from the past two seasons. YMMV....

So it's settled. I'll drop temps from 91, to 85. I think this may be enough to spur pairing. I'll post results as the season progresses. Thanks for the replies!