Breeding Questions Keeping Me Up At Night

[hotelvoodoo]

Hi, BP folk. I am hot into my second breeding season here, but I have a lot more questions than I did the first year. Hopefully you all can help me out.

Let me start out by laying out last year, since that's obviously shaped some of my conceptions about breeding. In our first year we only bred one female, a six year old virgin normal. She bred probably six times, and I hadn't really noticed a change in her. She dropped off of food about 3 weeks prior to laying and a week or so before she starting acting weird: hanging out at the back of the cage, lying inverted, etc. We bred her until she refused to lock, about a month prior to laying. 3 pins, 1 lesser, and 2 normals babies later, and here we are at season 2.

So this year, we've got a lot more females up to size, and I'm super excited to see some morphs out of the egg. Most are females in their second year over 1500g. Most of them have bred four-six times. But, watching so many girls breed (seven TBE), they all behave differently. We've had a lot of locking going on, but it just brings up more questions.

1. We started breeding about mid-October (a little overzealous, I know). We witnessed locks right away. Keep in mind we're dealing with virgin boys and girls this year. Does beginning breeding sooner mean ovulating and therefore eggs, sooner?

2. Do snakes ovulate at different paces, and do they ovulate more readily the more they are bred? Could a female become pregnant from only breeding once? For instance, our het ghost female jumped up to size in late November and we put a male in with her. She only bred once and since has only been taking spotty meals, and has been unusually testy and laying inverted. She's just getting ready to have an unusual shed. She's also refusing to breed again. Could she be gravid already?

3. Most of our breeding females are still eating ok. Is that a bad sign?

4. Do they refuse to breed once they become gravid? I have a couple of females that are starting to refuse males, though some are not.

5. Last year, with Aurora, I totally missed ovulation. This year I keep looking out for it. But my girls are big as is, and it's really tough to tell. What are some good signs that we're heading towards ovulation?

6. Am I worrying about all of this way too early?