Did you happen to weigh your small girl right after laying or get the clutch weight? Have the eggs hatched yet and if so how are they doing?



I had a 1350 gram female lay 4 eggs but two where rather small and went bad pretty quick and the other two are only about half way through incubating. She actual laid less than the normal 1/3 of her pre-lay weight but I suppose that's to be expected at the very small end.



I think I read somewhere that she got 16 eggs from this female before but hopefully she can fill us in on the full history.



It will be interesting as more captive breeding females get older if these large clutches become more common place. I bet the average age of females being bred in captivity this year is probably only about 5. We just haven't been breeding very many ball pythons until recently. I wonder if they don't peak in production until 10 - 20 years.



Someone involved in the African side of the import business posted a few years back that they got larger clutches out of the wild bred females over there than we do her in captivity. I wonder if that wasn’t mainly due to differences in ages.

[ Show Entire Thread ]