Is my male "faking it"?

[dr del]

Hi,


Bear with me if this is a stupid question as it's my first year trying to breed my royal pythons.

I first noticed my male royal breeding with my biggest female on the 31 st as I saw them in what looked like the "lock " position.

So I left him in the tank with the females ( I normally house the 3 females in one tank and had put him in while I was spring cleaning his - hadn't thought about the breeding thing as I didn't cool them down in the winter but had lowered the daylight hours).

The thing is I have now seen him in the lock position with 2 of the females but have never found any "splooge" on the paper substrate. The thing that confuses me most is he keeps mating with the big female - he was in the lock position again today when I cleaned out the tank but they parted really quickly and I couldn't see any sign of his hemipenes.

I was fairly certain I saw a mid-body swelling in both the larger female royals but they have now returned to normal and the largest one has shed on the 22nd of april.However I thought they would stop mating once they were gravid? I have tried to gently feel for lumps in the back third of the snakes but can't feel anything at all. Both the females and the male stopped eating rats ( biggest female last ate on the 17th of april - but she was patchy at feeding anyway and had eaten 4 rats , 1 every monday , in a row so I wasn't bothered. And the middle female refused her rat on the 24th april but did eat a full grown mouse on the 1st of may ) the male now seems to be eating mice (I chain fed him 3 adults on the 1st as he was looking a little skinny to me ) but won't look at his normal half grown rat

The main question I have is ;

Could he just be "going through the motions" without actually doing the deed?

I keep looking at the incubator I have running ( though I'm expecting cornsnake eggs so it's not like I'm wasting electricity for nothing if the royals dont breed ) and wondering if I will ever look in and see little royal heads peeking back at me.

I'm also wondering about the reliability of the shed cycle as they were not cooled down and kept eating all winter.


Any advice ?


dr del

[adizziedoll]

I thought they would stop mating once they were gravid?

I always wondered about this myself..

[elevatethis]

I'm not really sure about your other questions, but I'm sure of one thing- housing multiple snakes in the same enclosure is a source of stress for each snake and would almost certainly affect their breeding behavior, probably with ill affects.

One snake, one cage. There's a reason why RDR and NERD and BHB have huge rack systems to house them individually and not just one big "ball pit," which is essentially what you have going on.

[dr del]

Hi elevatethis,

I know you are correct about the one snake on enclosure rule but I am currently unemployed and can't really afford the materials to build and equip 2 more cages.

The "Ball pit" just kind of evolved over the years as people kept giving me snakes they could no longer keep. The tank itself is 6 foot by 2 by 3 with hides all over the place so takes up a fair whack of room and I didn't want to move them into tiny enclosues ( I dont really have any more room and don't know how to go about building a stacked 6 foot tank materials and strength wise yet).The three females have been sharing the viv for 6 years now - all feeding in my collection is done in a different tank I keep just for that purpose, a small 2 footer someone donated with a 5 foot corn snake in it.

In a possible update to the breeding question I found a blood spot near the big female this morning (she hardly ever moves from her fave cork hide at the cool end lately) it's kind of half blob / half smear so I dunno what to make of it.

Naturally I visually checked all snakes and can find no trace of injury - though the male hissed at me which was sweet.

All my tanks are in my living room (the only room I tend to keep heated ) so I'm not really keen on the look of a rack system - plus in scotland you need more than a heat pad to keep up the temps and I dont know whether the heat cable available over here could do it either? Any advice on that would also be appreciated.All my tanks at the moment use ceramic bulbs as the main source with a supplemental heat pad mounted on a back wall, with uvb bulbs - I know the snakes don't need it But it makes them look good and I figured it couldn't hurt.


dr del

[elevatethis]

I know you are correct about the one snake on enclosure rule but I am currently unemployed and can't really afford the materials to build and equip 2 more cages.

what are you going to do with the babies if you get them to hatch? Throw them in with the adults?

The tank itself is 6 foot by 2 by 3 with hides all over the place so takes up a fair whack of room and I didn't want to move them into tiny enclosues

Ball pythons LOVE tight spaces. You would not be doing them any injustice by moving them to a smaller space.

with uvb bulbs - I know the snakes don't need it But it makes them look good and I figured it couldn't hurt.

Not only do they not need it, it tends to stress them out. You realize that they are nocturnal, righ? I'd recommend you keep them on only while you view them for short periods of time.

I'm really not sure where to go with this, but it just seems irresponsible to take in snakes without the means to care for them properly. Simply throwing them in a large enclosure to fend for themselves is not healthy for the snakes in the long run. Good luck with them.

[dr del]

Hi again elevatethis,

what are you going to do with the babies if you get them to hatch? Throw them in with the adults?

No I will probably pass them on to the local herp shop,If you re-read my initial post you will see it wasn't a planned breeding.I also feel that temporarily housing a hatchling is easier than permanently housing a 5.5 foot adult.

Ball pythons LOVE tight spaces. You would not be doing them any injustice by moving them to a smaller space.

What size would you recomend? I had assumed it would need a minimum of 3 foot by two just to be able to thermoregulate and have a waterbowl and a couple of hides. Coiled up 2 of my females are around 12 - 14 inch diameter circle if this helps you work out the sizes, with the smaller one only being 4 foot long.

Not only do they not need it, it tends to stress them out. You realize that they are nocturnal, righ? I'd recommend you keep them on only while you view them for short periods of time.

You realise they have sunshine in africa right? Sorry, that was unfair, but I couldn't resist

Yes I know they are nocturnal and use opaque hides for that reason.If you don't use lighting how do you compensate for the lack of "daylight hours reduction" some of the books I have recomend to bring them into breeding condition ? (the ball python manual by Philipe de Vosjoli for example).

I'm sorry you find my housing conditions so intolerable .The snakes at least have been eating and growing well (from hatchlings in 2 cases) for 10 years.

The only exception to that rule was my male who was force fed for 2 and a half years in a shop before they gave up and gave him to me - he started eating 3 months later and has bin eating defrosted rats since ( 4 years) until this whole breeding thing happened.



dr del

[ddbjdealer]

I am currently unemployed and can't really afford the materials to build and equip 2 more cages.

So, put an ad in the paper, sell the 55g tank, use the proceeds to purchase 4 large sterilite bins with lids and then go to an office supply store and get some binder clips to hold the lids on. (about 30 bucks probably)

Then get some flexwatt and a thermostat.... on a budget, you could also use a rheostat... (dimmer) On a budget, this would cost you about $20-30 bucks.

In a possible update to the breeding question I found a blood spot near the big female this morning (she hardly ever moves from her fave cork hide at the cool end lately) it's kind of half blob / half smear so I dunno what to make of it.

Use the search feature to the forum to look up blood smears. It has been said in many different threads that breeding males sometimes drag their "junk" across the floor of the enclosure. It is also possible that an "aggresive" shed has occured, and bleeding from the vent could be a non-dangerous result of that.

Keep in mind that continued arguing about how you think it would be "okay" or "better" or "its worked for the past eleventeen years" or other coments like that about keeping all of your poor snakes together will not change anyone's mind on this forum. One snake, one cage is a mantra around here because everyone firmly believes it. Besides... if you're on a budget and you're unemployed, then smaller cheaper enclosures would probably be cheaper. Not to mention the heating costs in the long run. Four strips of flexwatt would probably take up far less electricity than your CHE and the UVB light.

Good luck!

[dr del]

hi,

Ok I will go google sterlite and flexwatt - because I'm in scotland and have never heard of either.Bear in mind I used to work in a repltile shop ( mind you it was about 9 years ago ) so they must have different brandnames over here or something.

The tank they are in is constructed out of wood and a glass sliding front and probably has the resale value of 0 assuming it fits through the door ( I built it in situ).

I realize if the heating worked a kind of rack system could be built very cheaply I just didnt want something looking like a cross between a snake colditz and a rubbish heap in my living room if I could avoid it

Would this flexwatt be able to cope with the temperature variations we get in scotland ? - it is for example 18 degrees c in the rest of my house and 21 in the living room and we call this a warm spell at the start of our summer.

I've always been slightly worried by UTH as I have previously seen some snakes burned by malfunctioning heat pads.Though the male I have was badly burned by coiling round an ungaurded light bulb as a hatchling by the people who gave him to the local herp shop I got him from so basically any unregulated/gauded heat source is dangerous I guess.

I did look through the threads for the blood spots and saw that apparently a streak was caused by the males and a spot by the females.None of the royals have shed ( I would have mentioned it I promise) but the middle female and the male are starting to go into a shed cycle (darkening down b4 going blue at the moment).

I'm sorry this has become a complicated housing thread - I only wanted to know if multiple matings occured in fertilized females and if males ever went through the motions but I guess my rambling got in the way.


dr del

[elevatethis]

If NERD and RDR and BHB pretty much everyone else over here in the states who make their living breeding snakes spend tens of thousands of dollars in rack systems to individually house huge collections of ball pythons, that's ALL the convincing I'd need to know that they should be housed individually.

You asked what size would be appropriate- for adults, a 41qt tub (36"x17"x6") will provide more than enough space. Sorry for not using metric, I'm not sure what they'd be over in scotland. Whether or not they have a proper gradient depends on how you heat the container. Flexwatt heat tape comes in a few different sized and can be attached to the bottom of the outside of the tub, and when controlled by a thermostat, proves to be a very efficient method of housing in terms of cost and space.

[dr del]

Thanks elevatethis,

I never disagreed it was the best method.

Thankyou for the inch sizes (Scotland is metric I'm old enough not to be) the qt thing however isnt a standard measurement - we tend to go by dimensions rather than volume for most of these things.

I'm only really concerned it wouldn't be able to maintain the temperatures - it gets pretty cold over here for most of the year - though not really bad mostly my house stays between 5 - 15 even in the non heated parts (though worst one was an exceptional -10 in my bedroom ).The living room is really between 10 - 25 on a yearly cycle I'd say.

I understand the big breeders using racks but I really only want my snakes to be pets not products and would prefer an attractive setup - it is after all the main focus of my living room.The reason I was asking about the tape as I was envisioning a kind of half rack with glass vivaria decorated and the flexwatt thing underneath the back end.

Does anyone know the answer to my original questions? cos he's at it again with the biggest female and she raises her tail for him so its not like he's forcing himself upon her.


dr del