... but it's definitely an ovulation ! The perplexing part is two-fold . These are the pair that I'm speaking of - 1st introduced on New years Day. ---



Btw, she's a het .

So, by the end of their first week of introduction, she starts a shed cycle (common), so I pull the male for and extra feeding as this is his 2nd partner for the year. She takes her sweet time to shed her skin, but finally does on the 14th. So I place him back, but he's now starting to turn opaque -- aargh !!!. I put him in with her anyways as sometimes the males will still court during their shed, but he really hasn't been doing anything since the 14th. So I go up to the snake room today to see if he's shed yet, and he hasn't - but to my suprise, she's ovulating. It's condensed in a smaller area, but its TALL and bloated . Here's the pic when this was first noticed. It doesn't look like much here because its in the far back corner of the pic --




-- so I start looking around for poop in other cages, and do some cleaning. Just before leaving, I look in to see that she has turned around showing me a much better view of her swelling ---




The perplexing part is --

>> There was only a 4-5 day window that no one was in a shed, and though I know that's long enough, the courtship that I witnessed was not that aggresive - I wouldn't have expected this yet.
Question - can a female ovulate without being bred (False ovulation) ?

>> Another thing that I'm aprehensive over is that I bred this pair last year, and she had an early litter of 7 slugs, and 6 premies that died within 24 hours. Has anyone had this type of poor outcome, and then had a successful litter the following year? Or is it likely that she'll repeat her prior bum litter ?
Thanks to all who reply with any experience in this matter.


-----
Snake room janitor

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