Do you lower temps for breeding season?

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Originally Posted by frankykeno

What we did do is watch the weather forecasts very carefully. As soon as there was a change coming, a storm, whatever, we made sure the males got into the females enclosures. Something about that barometric shift as storms roll in really seems to trigger breeding activities.

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Storms do help, kinda like candles and romantic music and settings.... anyway, it does help. Not that a male needs much help! :)

To answer your question Mike here are a couple of ideas. Like Julian said the lower levels run cooler. Also, if you use bedding (I like cypress) you can add more to the tubs you want cooler. A thick layer of cypress would insulate the tub, keeping some of the heat out.

Some experimentation would be in order to fine tune your temps. One thing to keep in mind is this will result in an overall drop in temps, not just at night. Personally I feel as long as the snakes can get to 85ish on the warm end all is well. Just look at the way Tracy Barker keeps her ball pythons.

I dropped my temps for about a week prior, to 85-6, and had locks from day one till the end of the season. I stopped putting them together when the snakes stopped locking for 3 consecutive tries... this was after I had raised my temps...

I dropped them in Oct, raised them back to normal in Jan... and the snakes kept locking until March-April.

I got two for two.

Bruce

Of course, I'm not an experienced breeder by any stretch of the imagination, I can only share my own personal experience. I'm convinced that barometric pressures have far more to do with the successful pairing of your animals than temperatures do.

Know your females. Tracy Barker said on Reptile Radio, if she has a consistent feeder that suddenly goes off food, she puts a male with her. I've got a female that is going to a friend (one I picked up as a pet store surrender about six months ago) that's been a voracious feeder that went off food recently. I talked to the recipient and asked if they minded that I put Winston in with her. No objections, and they were locked within the hour (this is just last week, with temps in the high 90's in Atlanta).

I observed multiple locks and a lot of courting in a 48 hour period that they were together. I also placed them together on a stormy night. We're in the middle of the summer, with longer daylight and warmer temps. But a crazy weather system that rolled in, and I had a receptive female - badda boom, badda bing!

I followed the Markus Jayne (ballpythons.ca) ball python breeding page as closely as I could, and I had 9 out of 10 successful clutches last season.

Hope this helps.

All excellent information, thank you.

One thing I think is interesting is the use of light cycles.

1) Ball pythons come from an area near the equator where, if everything I've heard is correct, the difference between summer/winter is less than 1 hour of daylight.

and

2) This is an animal that spends virtually all day in a rodent burrow anyway, and probably has no idea whether it's light outside or not.

It seems like it's one of those "to each his own" type setups.

IDEA: Link your thermostat to weather.com's current reading for Ghana or Togo to get a better replication of seasonal changes.

JonV