Success Rates

[hhw]

I was just curious what the success rates are for people when breeding their ball pythons. I'd like to know the following sucess rates:
1) For ALL females that were sufficiently bred to a male, with copulation confirmed on multiple occasions, how many became gravid?
2) For newly acquired females, how many became gravid the first year after they were acquired? The 2nd year? More than 2 years? Were these captive bred or wild caught?
3) For 18 month females 1500g and up, how many became gravid?

Currently, I have 1 female of sufficient size, and 2 females that will definitely be of sufficient size although fairly young (early 2003) that I am planning to try this season. I'm hoping to get lucky, although I'm not expecting any eggs this year, as I will only have had these females for a few months when I try them. I hear that generally they need a year to cycle into your program?

[RandyRemington]

1. Can't really answer that as I don't usually disturb them to watch for copulations. I think the main thing is that the female be big enough to produce. I know I've accidentally seen copulation with females who didn't produce and these where the smaller borderline girls.

2. Sorry again, I haven't acquired a lot of breeder sized females (they are like gold now days). I had one produce this summer that I bought a little on the small side last summer. I even got a little production from a girl I acquired in late November the year before (but not from two others acquired the same time). Interestingly both of those clutches I did get where really bad with lots of slugs. Not sure if it had anything to do with moving them to a new home within a year of breeding or just bad luck.

I've also bought girls that failed a couple breeding seasons before I gave up and sold them. Generally I do a relatively poor job of feeding (had to pick between having a wife and my own rat colony) so again I blame weight. However, some of those females might have been wc for all I know and I've heard that you can raise a cb up to breeding size about as quick as you can get some wc acclimated enough to breed.

A stat that might be of interest to you is on 4 females I produced in 2000. Two of them first produced in 2003, one first in 2004, and the last will hopefully first produce in 2005. I'm sure lots of people do better than this but in my case I'm taking 3-5 years to raise up a female.

3. None yet. I had an 18 month old 1,500 gram 25% chance het stripe girl lock up a lot but she didn't produce and will be much larger going into next winter. I did raise up 8 ch 94 girls much quicker (like 1,000 grams by 10-12 months) when I was single and had my own rat colony but I got married and unfortunately sold most of them short of 18 months but the two that I kept didn't produce either.

Perhaps I would be a good baseline/worst case scenario of conservative feeding. It would be interesting to see these answers from someone who does a better job of feeding as I still think babies at 2 years old is the exception rather than the rule and that not all females will even go at 3 years, but most probably do (with good feeding).