breeding terms and general timeline

[Mike Cavanaugh]

I see lots of breeding terms over and over again, and I need a general review of these commonly used terms. Please define the following terms as they apply to ball pythons: Please add any key terms that I might have left out that are commonly used.

Folicles:

building:

ovulation:

Please also give a basic timeline and what order these terms happen in.... PLEASE NOTE, I understand there are lots of variables!!!! If you had to pick an average for all the things in the example below, what would they be???

example: You start pairing a male and a female in october. usually around (mm/dd) you will see (??????). about (????) weeks / months after that you will notice (??????) then finally a few weeks / months later you will see (??????)... Then weeks / months later you will see eggs. after (???) days you should see the first baby head pop out... after (????) days / weeks they will be out of the egg completely... after (????) days they will shed and be ready to eat their first meal.


This info will be EXTREMLY helpfull for me, and I am sure plenty others. Thank you so much for this help!!!

[PythonChick]

I am not positive I am allowed to link to another site, so if I am not any moderator is free to remove the link but this is a helpful web page I like:

http://www.ballpython.ca/gallery/breeding.html

[LadyOhh]

Follicles: Ova that are developing.

building: Development of the Ova in the female, externally the female is getting larger in size.

ovulation: A large size gain in which the female releases her ova down her reproductive organ to be fertilized.

(I am doing this by memory, so if I am incorrect in my terminology, please correct me)

[Tosha_Mc]

A nice pictoral from the Snakekeeper DVD:

http://jetpythons.com/BPrepro.jpg

As for a timeline -- each snake is different.