Quote Originally Posted by Joe Massey View Post
you think 1 year and 4 months might be young enough? how many more months/years might be a good age for him to breed? - you do have a point. how ever i have a 10 month old male lesser(first time breeder) and he's been doing locks with no problems at all.

- as far as visuals, you do make sense, i check them before sleeping and early morning as well, i haven't seen any locks but if they did lock up, you think it happened for just a few hours while i was asleep? what's the shortest number of hours you've seen a male lock up with a female?
It depends on the individual, I've had a male yellowbelly that bred at 5 months of age, he produced a couple of clutches that year and then the following year he wouldn't lock up at all and didn't breed again until he was 3 years old.

Males do not need to be locked up for hours at a time to be successful, I would think that a few minutes is really all they need. Like I said, I've had a male that I never saw locked, I've got other males that I rarely see locked up but they still get the job done. One thing you can do is check for evidence the next day, breeding couples will often leave what look like little blood trails and musk smears on the paper (another reason I like using newspaper as a substrate)