Opinions on breeding young / small females

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Originally Posted by Kryptonian

I would rather wait till shes at least 2-3 years and 1500+ grams. I think, whats the hurry? If you are in it for the hobby then it will be worth the wait then you know you have a nice healthy mature female who will give you a nice healthy clutch of eggs that will hopefully hatch some good sized healthy babies. Sounds like more fun that way then breeding to small and then worrying about the female. I dont power feed for the same reason. I want my girls big and muscular and in perfect shape to have babies, not fat from over feeding just so they look big. Each one of my girls is a pet not just for breedng and Id feel awful if one got sick becuase i bred her to soon.

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The big hurry is creating a new morph that I do not have, and also producing morphs to sell. For example, this year I have a pastel het ghost female that is approximately 1200 grams and 1.5 years old. I also have a pastel ghost to breed to her. Some people would wait to breed her until the following year. I decided to breed her this year. If she goes for me, then I could possibly produce super pastel ghosts this season as opposed to waiting until next season. I am also in the same boat with a het pied female and a pied male. If she goes for me, then I could produce pieds this season. I do not feel that it in any way harms the females. So why wait? In my opinion, if the females are ready, then they will give me eggs. If they are not, then they will not.

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Originally Posted by 771subliminal

if you look at people grown women that have perfectly healthy babies and no problem with child birth range from our little people of 3ft to women of 7ft+ and all most likely will birth a avg size new born baby.

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Please please please do not compare human fertility to ball python fertility. Humans being primates we are by definition mammals and therefore don't lay eggs. This makes our reproduction different enough that I think any comparison is going to be pointless.

That being said woman die during child birth all the time and many many more would if not for expert medical care. Extremely young women as well as extremely old woman (over 35, sorry ladies) put themselves and there unborn children at greater risk. Weight also plays a huge role in woman's fertility.

I am not making any judgment calls here at all. I just think you have to ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing and see how you feel about it.

Personally I would not breed a female BP until her 3rd breeding season and only after she was over 1500 grams. I base this solely on the prevailing wisdom of books I have read and sites like this. I am not in the habit of rolling the dice with my animals health and well being.

I'd breed them if it was breeding season and the snake was 1500g or larger, regardless of age. And if a snake was 2 years old. plump, but short and was only 1200g, I'd breed her.

One other point that I don't think has been mentioned is the shape of an individual snake. Some of my girls are fairly short for their weight and age, good solid looking girls, whilst the one morph girl that I was wanting to breed from in order to get a nice combo morph is of course not like that :colbert: No she is going to be a really big girl as she is l-o-n-g and slim. This being the case I have decided :( not to breed her until she is 1750 grams or more. As has been said by others, my snakes are my pets and I will just have to behave myself and think of her welfare more than my impatience !!!! :sigh2:

Whilst typing this someone has made the same point about shape...

Haha, yeah. It is more about the shape and size. I remember hearing that 500g times each foot of their body length is a good way to figure out if they are safe to breed. So if your snake is 2~3 foot you could probably safely breed under 1500g, but if you have a 5' female you should probably not breed her at 1500g.

I have had it happen wit hno problem but the female in question was only 1300 grams. IT was also an unplanned event since i had to treat the room for mite and only had her and cage mate about 3 weeks. I was possible she was already gravid when I got them. I had ot treat the entire colelction for mites cause I had some on some cloths and they migrated into the snake room on me ( I used my bedroom as aqt room cause lack of proper space for a qt room)and had to do cage cleaning that mornig and a mite was on my cloths which causea population explosion in the snake room and I had to place all the snake inpillow cases and in the same room.

anyhow there are a lot of possible issues that can show up during the time she carrying the eggs and after she lays them. it hard, egg binding is one of the major ones. I also had the snake adopted out befoer she laid and the guy was waiting for her to drop to pick her up, I only let her go after she ate 3 times since i took the eggs and used an incubator.

I didn't read the 5 pages of this thread, just chiming in.
My experience has been this.
I breed 2 year old females all the time with success that are around the 1500g mark and are "stout".
I have never had good success breeding 2 year old females that are 1200g mark or are not "stout".
-d

Without reading all the prevous posts...

I have produced from 1100g females before, had nice hatchlings... And still regretted it. Reason: I feed her back up really hood and if I'm lucky she get up to 1300-1400g for the next season. So I get another tiny clutch from her. The same goes for the next season.

Point is that I have jumped the gun and now I'll fall behind in the long run as the bigger girls are giving normal and large clutches.


Justin

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Originally Posted by jkobylka

Without reading all the prevous posts...

I have produced from 1100g females before, had nice hatchlings... And still regretted it. Reason: I feed her back up really hood and if I'm lucky she get up to 1300-1400g for the next season. So I get another tiny clutch from her. The same goes for the next season.

Point is that I have jumped the gun and now I'll fall behind in the long run as the bigger girls are giving normal and large clutches.


Justin

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Hi Justin, thanks for you insight. From my understanding, what you described seems to be the consensus. Breeding smaller females can be done, but may not be the best in the long run not because their health but because it will take longer for them to start laying large clutches.

I shoot for the 40 inch mark with my up and coming females. If they don't make it, they get another year.