Unsuccessful females ??

[muddoc]

Way off topic but Tim, I saw your site for the first time a couple hours ago. NIIIIICE collection.

Thank you very much. We have tried hard over the years to be as selective as possible when building our collection.

I've got a 3000gm+ normal that I have had for two years. She is probably 8-10 years old. She did not go last year and this year she slugged out - 10 slugs and 1 little boob egg that is about 30 days in the incubator. She locked up with 2 males multiple times.

I think I know what her problem is though - She needs to go in a bigger tub. She came to me in a 32qt rack and I haven't bought a bigger rack yet. (bad mom!!) I'll fix that this summer and hopefully I will have better luck with her next session.

If she laid anything (slugs included), then I would say she is producing follicles, and is capable of laying eggs. Is she possibly obese? This can cause them to lay slugs. The other thing that I believe plays into the equation is the females comfort level that she is healthy enough to develop a clutch of eggs. That is hard to determine though, since we can't talk to them. She may have intentionally not utilized the sperm, because she thought it would take to much out of her, and threaten her health if she developed and laid eggs.

Just a theory.

I have a girl that layed good 6 eggs for me last year in her virgin season. She was bred to a cinnamon pastel male and all 6 eggs hatched Cinnys!

This year she completely puzzles me though. She looked like she was building and locked a bunch of times with my Mojave and Lesser, but since then nothing. She now refuses the males attempts, which to me says perhaps she ovulated? Very puzzling though, she never really sought out her cool side, and though a little larger, doesn't look for sure gravid to me. I guess i will just have to keep a close eye on her over the next few weeks. She had a shed already, so maybe she had her ovy and i just missed it.

Robin
H2 Exotics

She could have just quit breeding because the follicles had already begun to shrink. Was she a 2 year old virgin? Many of my 2 year old producing females will take off the following year. I would guess that she is not gravid. However, I would just palpate her and find out for sure.

Muddoc, Hi long time no see. This whole discussion brings up a question I have wanted to ask you and others with large collections. Our colection is growing exponentially as you know. My question has to do with overall success. When breeding a large collection like say 100+ females what would be considered a normal failure rate in breeding, or is there one. Do the odds even play into breeding like they do for hitting a morph. Any input is appreciated, especially from those with large collections Thanks ahead of time for your input.

In case you have never seen this, I have posted a number of statistics from my last 2 breeding seasons. I will be doing it again this year (as I do every year), and will probably be adding a few more statistics to the list this year. Here is a link to the thread. I think it will answer your question.
http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...ad.php?t=87360