Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My big girl has always been too large to get an accurate weight on my scale. Two days ago she laid 14 eggs weighting in at 1200 grams so I decided I would get a weight on her right after laying. So the total is 2568 grams after laying 14 eggs. How's that for large? Pics just don't do her justice.

How old is your girl?

I was lucky enough to get two clutches of 8 this year but still a long way off from the 12- 15 egg monster clutches a few are getting. My females are young and I don’t always do the best job of feeding them so most of my clutches are around 5.

Here is the info on my two moderately big clutches:

6 year old female - eggs 944g, female after laying 1776g
5 year old female - eggs 940g, female after laying 2140g

Interesting how the bigger female didn't produce more eggs in my case. The lighter one may have more potential to be a big producer some day. She is eating like crazy since laying, but then the other one ate very late into pregnancy (almost looks like she could double clutch – not that I would try it). Maybe some of the weight difference has to do with the lighter one having produced last year (6 eggs) when the heavier one didn't.

And congratulations on the large clutch!

I would actually recommend selective breeding for more and smaller eggs. Apparently in the wild ball pythons have a niche where they produce relatively small numbers of relatively large offspring compared to other snakes. But in captivity I don't think we really need huge eggs. I've had twin hatchlings at less than 40g each do just fine.

It's just amazing that these girls can put around 50% of their post lay weight into a clutch. I guess that would be 1/3 of their pre lay weight but I’m like you, I haven’t been able to weigh any of my big girls for some time and can only catch a weight post lay as my scale only goes to 2,400 grams or so. I just wish I got more eggs for all that effort on their part. With double clutching a corn snake can easily give you 30 a year.

that IS a monster ball python, congrats.

(good to see House D'ourden is still alive. . . how does Guenhywvar feel about the snakes? lol)