Input on multiple snakes in one tank.

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Originally Posted by wilomn

I'm wondering about this "eggs before she's ready thing" I keep seeing.

Has it occurred to ANY of you that if a female ovulates, even if it's only one or two eggs, that SHE is obviously ready and able to do so or she WOULDN'T produce follicles to begin with.

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This is absurd. There is ample evidence to conclude that breeding animals too young is detrimental to the animal. Again I am not saying that breeding young is definitively a bad thing. What I am saying is that the evidence points that way. Now if you want to challenge accepted wisdom you need to come with your guns loaded with scientific proof. When faced with a statement you don't agree with you can't just say where is your proof. You can say what makes you think that. But in order to assert that the statement is wrong you have to bring the proof yourself. What makes you think that breeding BP's young is better than waiting?

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Originally Posted by WingedWolfPsion

I actually have a theory about this in ball pythons, and I plan to test it. I'll compare the growth rates and clutch sizes of females first bred at 2000 grams, 1500 grams, and 1200 grams. I'll also compare females over 1000 grams bred at age 1 (harder to find), age 2, age 3, and age 4.

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Your study has a lot of factors. I would try to break out the factors into separate tests if you can. The problem is that the clutch size could effect growth one way or the other or the genetics that caused the growth could effect the growth size. Scientific studies tend to have very few variables. For instance you could study clutch size based on weight. From that you could draw a conclusion, then you would test that conclusion by looking at other variables. So if larger animals had larger clutches then you would test large animals at various ages and compare clutch size. Again scientific studies are very very hard and usually prove very very little. If you try to prove to much and its not a giant pain then chances are you are doing it wrong.

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Originally Posted by midtx350z

Well this is gonna have to work for now. The two boys are in the bottom one, and the small girl is in the top one. Cleo is in the big one.

We still need to work on the large display to split up all of them. Cleo seems a bit happier now. She's been calming down little by little. The other three are chill as always, they all ate rats yesterday, they're digesting them right now.

:snake:

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Thats great news. I personally would love to see some close ups of the different cages. I do think the hides should hug on 3 sides. I have studied my own BP's use of hides and found that she will always choose the smallest hide she can fit in. She can spend 2 days in one spot, coming out at night then returning, and if I take the hide off the top and put a bigger one on she will move. If take the hide off and put the same size hide back on top, she will stay. Its only one snake and one test but it may be true of your snakes as well.

This is our setup as of now.

http://i32.tinypic.com/2n8q0d1.jpg

Zelda, the smallest ball is on the far left. Drake, our savannah monitor is in the middle. Caesar, the largest ball is on the right.