First Attempt At Breeding Underway!

[zina10]

Thanks!



Thanks, Zina! I'm very happy to see that you are having lots of success with breeding! I will have babies starting to pop out left and right over the next couple of years. I am excited to finally have my first pair breeding, but honestly, i'm a little concerned about this female. She has been on a hunger strike for over 3 months and she has dropped from 1,800 grams down to 1,200 grams. I have had a couple breeders tell me that I should go ahead and breed her and that breeding can trigger females to start eating again sometimes, so I decided to go ahead and give it a shot. Do any of you have any thoughts you would like to share about that? On feeding days she has been very active lately when I try to feed her (literally trying to get out of her tub), but she doesn't want anything to do with the rats. I have been putting her boyfriend in with her for 3 days at a time then removing him for about 14 days then putting him back in and I have been leaving his recent shed in the tub with her...

I know snakes are pretty phreaky, but myself, i'm very weary of girls, who go banging their tails around! LOL!

Hm...
I don't want to alarm you, but that seems like quite the steep weight loss for being on a 3 month strike. I've had snakes being on a longer strike then this and barely loosing any weight at all. Certainly not a third of their weight.

It is true, that pairing can make some females EAT like no tomorrow. At least until ovulation, all mine quit eating a couple of weeks before ovulation.

I guess I would want to make sure this female is 100% healthy before breeding. 1200 gr. is a bit on the low side for breeding. Esp. with how quickly she is loosing weight.

Does everything else appear A-OK with this female? Have you gotten new snakes that may have introduced some internal parasites or something (far fetched, but back when I had rescues I've seen fast weight loss with internal yuckies, such as "Giardia" and/or worms)

Have you tried different feeders? Different sized feeders? Perhaps "pre killed" rather then frozen/thawed?

Most likely she is ok, just on a strike. But if she doesn't eat soon, I would start "digging" for reasons and trying different methods, etc, if you haven't yet. And if she continues not to eat and continues to actually loose weight, I would put a stop on breeding until this is resolved.

But those are just my thoughts, you are there and you know you snakes, follow your gut feelings