Reptile & Amphibian Forums

female?

Most of my projects originally were Het Pairs of Caramels, Pieds, and Axanthics. I had basically one male for one female in these projects, because that was all I could afford at the time. Now that I have more Co Doms than I have Het pairs, I have gotten to thinking about how many normal females I need for each male. Any rule of thumb? Three, Five?

Also, say you have a Pastel male proven breeder, and get a Pastel Het Ghost male baby, when do you let the male Pastel go, or do you just keep him back as insuarance? If so, just until the Pastel Het Hypo is proven, or for a few extra years?

Any input?

According to the Ball Breeding Bible (SKs Video) 1-5 is average but you can do more - keeping it down to 5 allows for each female to get at least one breeding session in per month and allowing for breather for the male. They also point out that you can do more than 5 but that it's best to do with an ultrasound handy so there is no waste and added strain put on the male. I think I've seen people posting that they run their males through 10-12 females - but I also know a lot of people have literally bred their animals to death. 5-7 sounds like a reasonable number to me depending on the size of the male.
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Tosha

speaking from experience, which I know is not done often enough on forums, one male per 4-5 females is average for proven males. I do not have an ultra-sound machine so I have to rely on multiple copulations to make sure that there is enough viable sperm at time of ovulation. With young males, 1.5 yr olds and younger, 1-3 females is usually all that take and any more is wasting those females. Older males that breed with gusto and eat throughout the breeding season get up to 6-8 as long as I know the females that he's breeding cycle at different times (some females we have ovulate in december and some don't ovulate until april/may and they do this every year).

Now for the other question. Me personally I wouldn't get rid of any morph male until I can replace him with a homozygous animal of that trait or that trait plus homozygous for another, we don't have enough females for him to breed at least one, and all other breeder males are proven. You never know when a male just won't breed for you and having a back-up male, even if it is a pastel can make you a few hundred dollars or some females to hold back for future breeders. It makes no sense to me to pay price $X and then in a few years sell the same snake as a proven breeder for 1/8 the original price when you can just pick up a few females for a couple hundred dollars and make 3 times the money he would sell for the following season. The only males that I won't keep after getting a replacer male is recessive het males all het co-dom males can be utilized and the resulting normals can be sold in the newspaper or to local pet stores.
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons:::

1.0 striped vanilla
1.0 spider
1.2 Citrus Ghost and hets
1.2 Albino and hets
2.3 het Pied
0.6 50% poss het pied
1.1 Pastel (male has additional gene going on with him)
a bunch of normal female breeders
a bunch of normal female holdbacks and several rescued normal males

0.1 columbian boa, she's a feeding monster, controls my
over production of rats, lol
0.1 brazilian rainbow boa, another rat eating monster
1.1 corns

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!