HOWEVER I can say that this particular female, has NEVER been with any Hypo gene carrying male since reaching sexual maturity. I can say this without a shadow of a doubt.

When she was young (and I mean between 5 to 8 months old) I did have her housed with a baby male Hypo Boa (a half sibling). This was when I was in college and didn't have racks or as much cage space as I would have liked. The two were housed together for just a few months and then separated when I had the space. Neither animals were sexually mature yet at the time.

When she was 18 months old, I had considered breeding her with a male Hypo because that's all we had at the time. However, she was SO young and only about 4 1/2 feet long that we didn't even bother. Plus, we had so many other big normal females to work with at the time, we didn't want to "waste" the male's time on such a young female (we did not have an ultrasound machine at the time).

Last year, the ONLY male the female Hypo was in with was our male Jungle. We wanted to make Hypo Jungles and the male was a VERY enthusiastic breeder with her so there was no need to back him up with anything else.

This year, the ONLY male the female Hypo was in with was our male Motley. This time, we had our hearts set on Hypo Motleys. We witnessed various courting sessions and two definite copulations followed shortly by an ovulation and a POS. So we did not feel the need to back up the male Motley with anything else.

We did not "prime" this girl with any other male either because she was our #1 breeder female for the season (this applies to last season too). We had our eyes on her as our VIP girl so she had top choice male. Also, she had good sized follicles to begin with at 17mm back in October this season (she also had big follicles to start with last season and produced our first litter last year as well). We will only use "lesser" males to help "prime" females with SMALL follicles.

We ocassionally throw in enthusiastic breeder males with females with small follicles in order to try and get the male to court/copulate with the female and hopefully stimulate her follicular development. When I refer to small follicles, I mean follicles in the 8 to 10mm size range. At 17mm so early in the season (for us at least!) this girl was also one of our earliest developers so there really was no need for any other males.

So, with that being said, I can tell you that we definitely did not have any other male in with her, even for cleaning or temporary housing or any other reason. This girl has only been with two mature males her entire adult life - the male Jungle last year and the male Motley this year.

This whole litter still has us scratching our heads. I pulled up the thread I posted from last year's Hypo Jungle litter and I agree that the Hypo Jungles from last season look NOTHING like the ones from this litter. Sean and I were talking about this earlier tonight so I'm glad you brought it up.

I would like to hear others' opinions about this litter and what may be going on with these babies. I don't understand why there is such an intense reduction of black on the Hypo Jungle babies. I told Sean - "Well if she used retained sperm, maybe it's like wine or cheese - it gets better with age!" LOL - kidding of course!

Thanks,
Celia
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Celia Chien
Celia Chien Photography

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