Valuable lesson learned after 5 years of Balling!

[muddoc]

I learned a valuable lesson this week after keeping and breeding Ball Pythons for 5 years. Make to sure to sex your animals when you get them and periodically throughout the years.

On Wednesday, I got all of my adult females ultrasounded, to see how our breeding season was coming along. During the session, we ran across an '04 female, that I bought as a farmed baby in 2004 and have raised since, that didn't have any follicles. That was strange. Well a gentle squeeze near the cloaca everted some hemipenes. I was almost heartbroken, as she is a very dark chocolatey BOY, that was my top pick that year. It did make sense, since she/he was much smaller than the rest of the girls that we got the same year.

Well today is cleaning day, so I decided to double check all of my girls that are small for the age, or that haven't bred and I felt should have been breeding. The first animal that I came to was an '06 farmed girl that we called a chainlink. Really neat animal. Well low and behold, nice big penes and loaded with sperm plugs. Well I put that one in with a spare female, just to see if I could reproduce the look or not. Another heart breaker.

The biggest let down of all was still to come. I did have one female, maybe, that we tried to ultrasound, but she was very tense and balled up. She is a very shy animal. We couldn't see in her very well, so I just blew it off, and thought I would keep breeding her anyway. She is a 2005 66% Poss. Het Genetic Stripe. Well my Het. G-Stripe male has been breeding well all season, but would never touch her. Now I know why. She has big ole penes.

The moral to the story, is to make sure you are checking your animals periodically, because sometimes, when they are small, you may just mis-sex them. ISince it was so long ago that I got these animals, I can't confirm that I checked their sex when I got them. I am pretty anal when it comes to sexing my animals, but maybe I didn't double check these, since they all came from breeders that I have dealt with before, and I respect them and have never had a problem before. I don't blame them, and I am sure they will make things right. I just wanted to pass this on to others, in hopes of preventing another person from spending 2-4 years raising an animal, and have breeding plans in mind, only to find out that you spent alot of time and end up with no project.

I hope this helps just one person form having a big let down.

Sincerely,