It was either late August or very early September when someone else on the forum posted about a female that had still not given birth at 200 days POS.



Here's some food for thought. If you are going to take her to a vet and she is gravid, how are you going to get her out, transport her, have her checked out and return her to her enclosure without injuring babies that may be in her? Take every precaution possible so you don't injure any possible babies.



With that said, althought it is not common for females to go past 180 days POS, it is also not unheard of that some females go well past 180 days POS. It is also well known that while shedding twice is the norm, it is not typical of every situation. There are countless cases of females only shedding once as well as females that have shed three times before they dropped their litters.



You should take what is written in the books as a general guideline and use that as a predicting value to shoot for but not as the rule. Most of the books are actually stating an average/general guideline which is usually taken from actual breeding data. Most of the time the values are stated as the mean of the data or sometimes as the most commonly occuring value of the data set that is being evaluated. THE OUTLYING DATA IS USUALLY DISREGARDED, NOT MENTIONED OR FACTORED INTO THE MEAN VALUE. Remember, 180 days POS is just a guideline and should ne be reagarded as absolute.



The conditions inside your enclosure, the health and age of your female, the particular species you are dealing with, whether she is some from of integrade or a true bloodline and even the conditionds outside your encloseure all factor in on the final outcome.



Additionally, just because you count 180 past the shed doesn't always mean that the female actually ovulated at the point just prior to the shed. There is still the possibility that she ovulated later than you thought while still retaining sperm and very well may still be gravid, just not quite as far along as you think. Even the big breeders have females here and there that hit past the POS date.



Hope this helps you out



Chris

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