Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Is there an age limit for breeding females? I have an eight year old female we're flirting with the idea of breeding and just wondered on everyone's thoughts?

Ball pythons can and HAVE produce offspring up to the age of 38 years! So no prob with your "old maid" 8 year-old ....
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Brad Chambers
WWW.HCU-TX.ORG

The Avalanche has already started-it is too late for the pebbles to vote....

Yup, no issues at all. My oldest is 11 years old and has had 3 clutches since she was 8....10 eggs, 8 eggs and just 10 more eggs earlier this month.

I didn't think there would be with their life span being so long, but I wanted to be sure. We aren't sure if we're going to try yet. We have a male pastel we'd love to breed with her. Another question, what are the pros and cons to maternal incubation? Thanks.

Well, that's the way they do it in nature, so obviously it does work-but under captive conditions maternal incubation is, IMO, problematic. Remember that in the wild the female can seek out the perfect spot to nest based on temperature and humidity, which is important when you consider that ball females have little or no ability to raise their coil temperature to "incubate" their own eggs. So in captivity you must assure both a temperature near but not above optimal for incubation, while at the same time providing greatly elevated humidity (difficult in most indoor environments), Additionally, it is a possibility that a bad egg could rot and kill the others inside the maternal coils.

Now contrast that with all the obvious advantages of artificial incubation:

-You can provide precise control of temps and humidity
-any "bad" eggs can be immediately identified and removed
-the female can quickly be placed back on a feeding schedule so she can be in condition to breed the following year.

For these reasons, few if any professional breeders use maternal incubation.
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Brad Chambers
WWW.HCU-TX.ORG

The Avalanche has already started-it is too late for the pebbles to vote....

Actually - optimal temps and humidity for keeping ball pythons is fine for maternal incubation as well - yes a bit higher humidity but mom will take care of that as needed.

Actually - bad eggs will not affect healthy eggs either in the incubator or moms coils.

Actually -- if you've bred your female at optimal size the six(ish) meals she misses while she is incubating her clutch shouldn't be a big deal.

Maternal incubation is very simple and effective - IME much easier than the artificial.
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Tosha
JET Pythons
Toshas Blog

Herp Medicine does not equal a bottle of Baytril - Dr. Scott Stahl

I disagree-yes some bad eggs will dry up and do no harm, but "wet-rotting" eggs can and will ruin a clutch, and I can say that from bitter experience. Greg Maxwell has an interesting discussion on this in "The Complete Chondro"

As far as the number of meals goes, my 50 or so breeder female balls typically, with normal periods of shedding and inappetance, are hard pressed to take in the 25-30 good meals they will need to breed the following year. Those extra meals are definitely needed in my collection!

As I said, there is good reason that professional breeders all use artificial incubation.

That said, I agree-for some folks maternal incubation will work fine-as long as you have a good female with a strong brooding instinct and the right cage conditions
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Brad Chambers
WWW.HCU-TX.ORG

The Avalanche has already started-it is too late for the pebbles to vote....

I've only tried it once but it worked out well. I was going to maternal incubate all clutches this year but I'm chickening out. I have a new snake room that maintains better humidity that I thought would work well but this will be my first summer in that new room to test my insulation and temperature control so I'm getting the incubator ready as backup and might do some of each or completely wimp out and pull everything I get.

Pro's:

1. You should get to see something like the below.
2. Maybe helps that the mom gets to see her eggs hatch.

For #2 I don't know of a good way to tell but this female did eat very well after her eggs hatched and laid a nice clutch again the next year. The babies tended to be a little slow to start eating (lots of yolk?) but did eventually all start and did fine.