Here's an update from my breeding season. I have 23 females I'm pairing up, I just did an ultrasound today, this is the resulting follicle size sorted from smallest to biggest:
0.0 9.4 10.8 10.8 11.1 11.8 11.9 13.7 14.4 14.5 14.9 15.9 16.1 17.4 18.2 18.8 23.5 25.6 27.9 30.7 30.8 31.8 32.4
Looks like my snakes are all over the place LOL. You would never know by just looking at them. I should be getting close to ovulation with the biggest follicles, I'm pretty sure that happens around 45 mm, I'm guessing it's 5 to 6 weeks away. The 'zero' size is a pied female that I paired up a couple months ago. She was on a fast before breeding and has not eaten since the season started. The funny thing is that I've seen her lock up multiple times. I guess no food in means no follicles LOL. Two out of three over 30 mm have gone off of food for the last few weeks. All others are eating aggressively. My retic female is at 23.5 mm, all the rest are ball pythons.
Here are a few shots of the follicles from my ultrasound machine. The white dotted line 'X' is my measurement in two directions across the follicles (immature eggs). I was only bit twice ultrasounding my snakes, once in the chest and once in the hand, but I didn't lose any blood LOL.
I also found that my incubator temp is not stable in my snake room with an ambient temp of 81, apparently I needed to put it in a cooler room. Looks like the space heater kicking on and off was making it get too hot once in awhile. I'm looking forward to filling it up with eggs!
Hope you enjoyed the update!
This one is from my reticulated python female, notice the follicles look a little different, I'm guessing because it has to go through a thicker snake (more tissue in the way makes it look a bit fuzzy).
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