First, in this case, there is a seperation between captivity and nature.
Lets approach what occurs in nature, -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------whoops, there is no data on what natural snakes do. So in this case, I would have to spectulate. And boy do I hate doing that. I hate do do that, because people often do not take spectulation as spectulation, they take it as fact. Its not.
With that said, I would assume that if a cycled female is not paired up and cannot find a male, she will absorb without problem. The reason I say this is, there is very little data, on finding snakes that are egg bound or suck with ovum.
In the last five years, I have seen it twice. We found a banded rock on our site with hardened ovum, a few years ago. And I found a large adult female greenrat that was eggbound. Two examples from millions upon millions of occurances means absolutely nothing.
To captivity. The most common result with captives absorbing ovum is complications. It seems, to have a accumilative effect. They may still succeed in laying a clutch or two, but in many cases it will not end well. In some cases, it is immediate.
I am sure its more about captive conditions then the ability of the snakes themselves.
Heres the problem with this forum, people will agree and disagree. But some if not most here may not understand reproductive biology of these snakes. To me, this is why people here say, I am going to breed this snake etc. Also why they think you can simply not allow copulation. They think you simply put two snakes together and hope they breed. The experience breeder understands the biology behind this. Females must cycle before they can breed. They understand all you have to do is look at a female and you can tell if she has cycles. Or, you can palpate for reproductive evidence. You can easily feel ovum and or eggs. When a female palpates ovum, there is no guessing, you simply add a male and mating will occur(if the male is healthy. Again here is seems people think its simply putting them together, so not putting them together is a simple answer.
For instance we have a small female king produce this year. She belonged to my good friends relatives. She was about two years old and only 14 or 15 inches long. So they gave her to me, I fed her up, and she cycled, (palpated her and found ovum)at aprox 19 inches. She laid 7 good eggs. No problems, she has put on some size since then.
My same friend had five female thayeri last year, it did not put them together(breed them), I asked why not, he said something like they had not fed much yet. It was may, I said to late. I went to his house and all were bound up with ovum. Of those, I bred one successfully this year, and allowed two more to pass their hardened ovum. Hopefully we will allow success next year, as they are very beautiful snakes. Those are just an example.
Again the problem with some folks here is, they do not know or understand the mechanics of why a snake is failing for them, so they simply get rid if it as its not acting right. Then there is no problem. Cheers
