The question is, is this female showing signs of being gravid, or is this an ovulation!? The girl has been coiled up basking for a few weeks now. I thought I saw what "may" have been 2 different ovulations, but they werent quite the Swallow the Football that Im used to looking at. Here's the notes/timeline I have....
9-24-06: last meal, 1 XL rat
10-14-06: Male introduced
10-16: courting/copulation noticed
10-21: courting stopped
11-8: slight swelling in the female
11-30: courting/copulation
12-2: breeding stopped
12-3: female swelled
12-17: more courting/copulation
12-21: breeding stopped again
12-24: breeding
12-25: breeding stopped
12-26: big swell, possible ovulation, male on other side of cage from female
1-7: breeding
1-9: breeding stopped
1-25: possible ovulation noticed
since 1-25, nothing.... just her basking in the heat slightly swelled at times
Then today (3-5)the pictures below.....
there has been no breeding since, male has been pulled out, and the female has been coiled under the basking lamp without much movement since. However, today, 3-5, I noticed this morning her swelling was getting bigger. And just now I checked on her again, its yet even bigger. She has not shed since september, so there was no POS for me to predict a birth date, so I took the last "possible" ovulation and counted 120 days from that, which puts her approximately around May 26th. But being that this is only about 6 weeks since I saw what MAY have been ovulation, is it too early to be seeing her swelled this much already? These are the pics as of about 15 minutes ago.... What do you guys think? The swelling is to the far left of the pics
