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I just had my jungle patterned female drop 13 good eggs.

I am a bit confused though.. I bred her to my '08 het albino male out of the extreme line. He was only 8 months old when he bred, so I didn't cool him.. I know westerns can breed without cooling, but there is usually a sacrifice in fertility.. My question is,, is there a better chance that she retained sperm from last year, or is it possible to get 100% fertility from a male that wasn't cooled??

-Jon

Here is a pic of the female.

We are in Florida so cooling enough can be tough. I think you just had him in with her just at the right time in the development of the ova to get great results. Beautiful female by the way.

Both are very possible,I guess the questions is what did you breed her to last year? So you know what you might be producing this year.realllly nice looking Jungle

Silver Anaconda

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Brent Bumgardner
bwbumgardner@aol.com
703.431.1776
Superconda Website

Thanks guys, she is real neat looking and there have been a few of them produced out of this line, so my fingers are crossed in hopes that I can prove it genetic..

She was bred to a normal last year, but actually didn't produce any eggs.. This is becoming more and more of a concern for me. How do we really know what we are buying if they can retain sperm for this long?? It's like you have to breed your morphs to virgin female in order to be guaranteed genetics.. How long can they retain sperm and what does everyone else do to make sure you are actually producing what you think you are, if multiple males have been bred to one female over the years?? I am starting to think that you need to keep specific males with specific females unless you are dealing with dominant traits..

I guess I'll be keeping all 13 of these... At least I know they came from a jungle and they may produce albinos!! LOL...

-Jon

I'm a total newbie to the breeding thing, but I think you raised a very interesting point. A lot of species, including humans, can have simultaneous pregnancy with eggs fertilized by different fathers. But in most cases the pregnancies are within a very short time period and thus are more reasonably easily tracked. It's interesting to think about all the potential complications in terms of tracking parenthood in the case of a species that can hold semen for so long. I'll be really interested to see what the hatchlings look like!

Jon,
I ran into the same problem a few years ago with all the genetics going on with the hondurans.So, I fixed it by only usuing visual males in that type of case.
When a clutch in question hatches I always know who the father was even if I used two males because I use very different males on purpose.
But if your females are "normal" then again I would only ever use a single male on her to be sure.

L8r