When you start pairing

For those of you that do not breed year round, what month do you START putting snakes together for the breeding season?

It is truly up to you and when you want to do it. I always start putting males in with females a month after beginning the cool period. This for me is the end of November. I breed through mid-March so around the 15th I warm things back up and stop breeding. This is just my method and there are hundreds of different ways people do it. :D

not to :hijackd:
Do you have to cool??

You dont have to have a cooling period. Some do and some don't and have the same success. We didn't cool last year and had all our females take and had all healthy clutches. We were planning on trying a cooling period this year but after reading about to many not doing the cooling thing, we decided not to. This year we have a lot more girls so we will see how it goes and base next year off it.

I usually start pairing the first or second week of November.

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Originally Posted by PitOnTheProwl

not to :hijackd:
Do you have to cool??

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Not really. I have always used a cool down and had it work, so thats why I do it. As was stated some people have very good luck with out a cool down and that is great it is prob better for the health of the animal to not have one (less chance of a RI) so if that works for you by all means go for it :gj:

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Originally Posted by MojaveLesser

Not really. I have always used a cool down and had it work, so thats why I do it. As was stated some people have very good luck with out a cool down and that is great it is prob better for the health of the animal to not have one (less chance of a RI) so if that works for you by all means go for it :gj:

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Whats RI?

Respiratory infection :)

We start cooling on October 1st, and then one month later we start introducing males into the female tubs two days at a time. We do this for three more months until we bring the heat back up, and then we start leaving the males with the females for 3 days at a time. This seems to work really well for us, but there is no "One right way" to do this, it is just what works for you and how you feel is the easiest. Hope this helps, and good luck with your future breedings.:)

I have found that keeping the hot spot the same and lowering the cool side temp seems to work better for me. It lets me better tell with a female is cool seeking and when they are heat seeking.

As for when I start pairing animals I started really early last year like October. But normally I try to start in November. There are females that I wont start breeding till Jan or march simply because they weren't up to weight or in past years they have been late to lay anyway so why waste the male on months of pairing just to have them lay in Aug again just like they did for the last 4 years..