I start in mid to late November, and stop when I have clutches in the incubator, and not a single female will lock any longer, after 2 weeks. You can generally tell if the males are interested, or not. If they're not interested, the female isn't releasing the proper pheromones, and there's no point in pairing any longer.
Sometimes a male can get a hormone boost if you give him a brief introduction to combat with another male, but in most cases, it's not necessary. It's probably not the male's fault when breeding doesn't occur.
if you want to check, take your disinterested male, and put him in with a girl who's already been locking up--if he starts courting her, you can remove him before anything happens, and you know it's the females he's being put with that just aren't ready yet. He will only court a female who's giving off the proper pheromone trail to let him know she's receptive.
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