Shannon made an interesting observation in his post showing an ovulating female:



"I do believe that with stored sperm from previous breedings you will in fact become gravid even if I don't put her in with a male? "



(He was talking, I think, about getting eggs in 04, for example, fertilized ONLY by breedings in 04, breedings that preceded successful egglaying in 04)



If this can happen it poses obvioius problems for someone who breeds a female to a male of one genotype one year, and a different genotype the next (I've talked to people who proposed to breed a female to a diff genotype male for her second clutch! I worked hard to discourage that, because i HAVE gotten good eggs from a female who never bred to a male after laying her first clutch Those second clutch babies could never have any assumptions made about their heterozygosity--well, in fact, those breeders were prepared to make any number of assumptions, but they would have a high likelihood of being unfounded)



I've never intentionally not bred a female following a year in which she bred successfully, just to "test" the premise of retained sperm. Has anyone? Or has anyone ever got babies that could only be explained by sperm retained from the prior year?



PLEASE be careful and precise with your replies: I've had people tell me stories before of "inexplicable" babies, and under careful questioning in EVERY instance it has turned out they did, in fact, have the female with a male that could produce the "inexplicable" baby, they just discounted the pair's time together because they didn't see anything happen, the time was very very short, etc., etc.



peace

terry

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