Do you lower temps for breeding season?

[Mike Cavanaugh]

I know a lot of you breeders lower temps (usually a night drop) when breeding ball pythons...

My question: are there many people out there that have been able to successfully breed without changing the temps? If so, what are your temps set at? the normal 82 cold side 92 hot side???

The reason I ask: My problem is that I have an 8 tub rack filled with females. I only plan to breed two of these females this year. I want the other 6 to continue to grow and put on more weight and be ready to breed next year. The rack in question is ran off of one helix... I don't want to have to lower the temps on all 8 because I am afraid that will cause the 6 non breeding females to go off feed... and I really want to avoid that if possible.

Should I just attempt to breed without lowering temps, or should I lower the temps for everybody in the rack?

Any help on this subject would be greatly appreciated!

[Mike Cavanaugh]

One more related but very different question...

The males specificly.... do most lower their temps just like they do the females during the breeding season?

[rabernet]

I didn't purposely cool last year, but the room temps did drop a little bit. But as far as making manual adjustments on the thermostat - I didn't. I went 3 for 3 on my clutches.

[Drew87]

If you go to like adams sight in his breeding info he lowers the temps but i guess to each his own, i know some who do and some who dont. hope this helps

[jknudson]

I did lower temps this year... at roughly 8pm I would cut the power to the flexwatt on my breeder female and breeder male racks, bringing them to the ambient room temperature of 80F at the lowest. During the day I offered a 88F hot spot from the usual 95F hot spot, with cool side temps still at 80F.

Out of doing this....I only got one clutch out of five pairings, and it was late anyways. Despite my regulation of the room temps, the animals must've been able to tell that it was still winter out in MN here.

I didn't get really good follicle development until mid april, when the outdoor temperatures here finally starting climbing, despite returning them to full heat cycles about mid March.

Am I going to cool next year? Probably not... they go when they want to go.

[broadude]

I didn't purposely cool last year, but the room temps did drop a little bit. But as far as making manual adjustments on the thermostat - I didn't. I went 3 for 3 on my clutches.

Almost the same here, but I don't lower the temps. I purposefully lower the ambivent temps in the environment by turning off the heat in that section or by moving the racks to a cooler room. I maintain the 90-92 with Johnsons, and the middle still stays about the same temp..but the cool end is cooler. This gives the female access to a cooler section if she so desires.

I do not risk great changes in body temperature, because it's been suggested that doing so can cause R.I.s. I have successfully bred every snake that I attempted (well one fooled me, I mistook a building for ovulation and pulled the male too soon)

Hope this helped.

[bigballs]

ball pythons may breed without being cooled but i would think that lowering temps before breeding season is to induce a build up of testosterone in males so that they may become more effective breeders. my ambient room temp naturally drops a few degrees during the colder months and thats about all the cooling i do. i also keep breeding males on the upper rack levels where the ambient temp is a little higher and come cooling time i switch them with lower level tubs to exaggerate the cooling for those specific animals.

[West Coast Jungle]

Last year I cooled this year I didnt and got pretty much the same results.

[Sputnik]

The ambient temp in the room drops during the winter, this seems to trigger off the breeding season for us.... I do drop maybe 5F over night, but just to mix it up.... not every night and sometimes I'll just switch a rack off over night.

I like to mix it a bit, mother nature does the same.

[frankykeno]

We didn't lower temps at all this year other than the room the BP's in is naturally a bit cooler in the fall months anyways but we didn't change our heating source temps at all. Most of our females took and our males certainly seemed to show lots of interest in breeding.

What we did do is watch the weather forecasts very carefully. As soon as there was a change coming, a storm, whatever, we made sure the males got into the females enclosures. Something about that barometric shift as storms roll in really seems to trigger breeding activities.