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