Posted by:
Luke Snyder
at Sun Feb 11 17:41:46 2007 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Luke Snyder ]
Hello To every one this is my first year breeding boas and I think it has been going pretty good. My room temps have been about 76 at night to 80-81 during the day from nov.1 to about the middile of january. Now they are at a pretty constant 84 degrees. A hot spot was available occasionally throught the cooling period, and now is available at all times about 98 degrees.
The pair is an 05 Motley 50% poss het albino, and a female of unknown origin that I found at a local pet store(incredibly awesome find!!). Going into the breeding season the motley was about 4 feet long and looked to me like he was ready to breed. The female had good body weight, excellent muscle tone and appeared to be in really good contition. My only hesitation was the size difference, this female is easliy 9 ft long and 40-50 lbs atleast (the scale I tried to use maxed out at 40 lbs and she maxed it out easily). But in the end of October I put them together just to see what my motley would do, and he instantly started courting.
This being my first time breeding boas I was blown away at this courtship, he never left this big female. He was constantly crawling in and out of her coils, I was blown away. I hoped that he would show some intrest, but this was more than I expected. Right off the bat after about 2 weeks of courting I saw what appeared to be the first copulation, I was so excited, I know that it might have only been tail alignment but I saw lots of that and this looked like a copulation.
So I left him alone, and sure enought about a week later another copulation (Pretty sure there was penetration here, but what do you think?)
After this I pulled him out to feed him a meal since he had been working so hard. Gave him 2 days rest and back at it again. a couple weeks later another copulation this time his tail was wagging while they were locked up, which I hear thats a good sign of a soild copulation.
That was the last copulation I saw about the beginning of january, after about 2 1/2 months of courtship I saw about 4 good copulations( I had so many copulation pics I didn't take a pic of one other one.)
So to this piont the male is losing intrest and this female is starting to look fat. I was getting really excited. On 1-13-07 she was acting very restless, and she drank an entire bowl of water. For about 3 days in a row she parked herself right next to the water bowl and drained it every day, I couldn't believe it. So after all this water she is looking even fatter, I am thinking that she is putting all that water into her folicles. On the 19th of january I noted that she was her fattest yet thought it might have been an ovulation, but it was not as big as I was expecting it to be and she did not procede to go into shed, so I then thought it must have been the pre ovulation swell.
Through all this the male was still courting her just no tail alignment(maybe he knows he got the job done?). A couple days later she was looking more normal again the swelling had gone down, and she moved over to the heat. Previous to this she had always been on the cool end, so now she is basking and looking very full, I am waiting any day for an ovulation and then about 4 days of sitting on the heat, boom she blew up looking really fat I was sure this was ovulation. This happened on the 27th of january she continued to look very swollen for about 2 days. So again I think that this is ovulation she has been sitting with her body inverted, I was sure this was it. So I waited for her to go into shed and nothing, she even moved back over to the cool side of the cage.
Now the male has lost all intrest, and she is still looking very full, very obiously full of something right where you want her to be. So from the 27 th of jan to now she has been looking very full, sitting on the cool end of her cage, and just confusing the heck out of me. I dont know if I should think she has ovulated or if she is just still full of folicles.
I have another pairing that has already taken, a hypo male and a normal female. I paired these two up about the same time as I did the motley, got the same results in courtship, she ovulated on 1-6, this female is about 6 1/2 feet long she started to go into shed after looking pretty fat, and one day it was an obvious ovulation. She shed 10 days later and is now very gravid moving back and forth from the heat, sitting in heat conservation positions and spending alot of time basking. I am pretty sure she is done now I am waiting.
Any advice anyone is willing to give is greatly appreciated. I think the this pairing would produce some incredible motleys!!!! This female is so big it is hard to really tell whether or not she has ovulated, I would think a female this size would be a HUGE ovulation. I am stumped, and really hoping this female takes, and I am very intrested in hearing what every one thinks about this.
And thanks for helping with my pic posting problem.
Luke Snyder
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