Quote Originally Posted by wilomn View Post
And fish swim and birds fly.

Why do people always throw up comparisons with mammals when talking about reptile reproduction?

There is NO denying that early pregnancy in mammals can be detrimental to the female. But, and here's a key point you seem to have missed, we are NOT discussing mammals.

Reptiles do things a tad differently, especially the egg layers.

IF a female can lay viable 2 viable eggs and have no ill effects from it, is that not a successful breeding? It may not bring the owner as much profit as a 6 or 12 egg clutch, but if there is no difference in the females after laying, why is it better to have large clutches?

I'm not advocating breeding small or young females. I am saying that IF the female produces viable ova, is fertilized and then lays good eggs, how is this wrong? No one gave her hormone treatments. No one forced her to produce ova. She did it because she was ready to.

Otherwise, she would not have produced ova.

Opinions are fine, but lets try to be factual and species specific, not emotional and anthropomorphic.
Well I am assuming your first question was rhetorical but I will answer it. People compare to reptiles to mammals because as humans we have a vastly greater experience dealing with mammals when compared to reptiles.

The fact that we are discussing reptiles was not lost on me. In fact I opened my post with a link to an article on egg binding. You neglected to make any comments referencing the topic. What are your thoughts on egg binding?

You then go on to lay out a scenario with lots of IF's. IF all of your presumptions are true I would agree with you. Are you so confident that there is no risk associated with young and/or underweight breeding, and no long lasting effects, that you would recommend others breed young and/or under weight females?

If you wouldn't recommend you breed these animals then how can you in good conscience recommend that someone house a male and female together.

Too often people take a recommendation of one snake per enclosure as a call to arms.

Lets keep our eye on the ball. The OP did not ask for advice on how to house two BP's together. The question was what are our opinions. My opinion is that if you have to ask you should not do it. I am not a big fan of scare tactics or mis leading information but you can't responsibly just say that eggbinding, spread of disease, stress, and cannibalism are nothing to worry about.

If a 16 year old straight male comes up to me and says, "Hey what are your thoughts on unprotected sex?" Would I be a responsible 30 year old man if I said "Good times, the chances of you knocking up someone on your first try are pretty slim. The chances of you catching a disease at your age are pretty slim also if you don't pick a dirty girl" then I can go on to tell them about my personal experience "I have had lots of unprotected sex and never caught a disease and a good friend of mine has been trying to get pregnant for 6 months with no luck." If a kid asked me specific questions then of course I would give specific answers, but when the question is general the person is generally looking for advice. So again my advice is not to keep your snakes together.