Reptile & Amphibian Forums

What is the proper weight in grams to breed a female Pacific gopher snake? Also, is it necessary to brumate the females as well as the males (male fertility)?

247.93 grams, and yes.

just joking..........

There is no set body wt. to determine breeding size..... wait until your snakes are 3 or 4 years of age, given that they have had fairly regular feedings. You will with experience begin to recognize when your female snakes "look mature". Where you will get into trouble is pushing them too fast and breeding them too young. This is generally an artifact of breeders wanting to turn around their "investment" and loosing site of the animals' well being.

When in doubt.... wait it out!

I have had 20 month old Pituophis breed no problems (I do not encourage this), and I have had established 5 year old females encounter complications such as retention of all or part of a clutch.....

Also, you should cycle both members of a pair to ensure better breeding success.

The group that I always have trouble with are the P. c. pumilus. They are so small in adulthood and it really takes some getting used to breeding a 2 foot pituophis!!!

Thanks for the reply! Most useful information!
I have an 08 Pacific female who has just hit the 500 gram mark. I don't plan to breed her until next year, as although she is big she may have other parts of her anatomy that need to mature more. I was just concerned that she would not be big enough next year in weight, having had no idea how much they should weigh to breed.

What I mean by next year is 2011, not this next year! LOL!

And the bit of a spoof with your internet monikers . . . Be careful with matches, okay?

Good question, my friend, because I was wondering the same thing about my big Texas bull; the w/c GB gopher is still smallish (and I'm feeding it through this winter unlike last where it went on a hunger strike), and I haven't sexed it yet.

And then there's the matter of baby snakes; I've still got three corns I'm trying to find homes for . . .

concolor1
Still trying to figure out how to load pictures to this site
Plus some jerkoff stole my camera

Hi, concolor1! I don't mind if people recognize me (greatballzofire). I took the name pyromaniac when I first started with pyros.
Some info I found:
"Average size: 5.25-7 feet (Larger animals are out there, but are MUCH rarer than it seems. Most "7-footers" that people talk about are actually 6' long animals that can be STRETCHED to 6.5 or 6.75', but are easily mistaken as appearing bigger than they actually are! Average weight: 4-8 pounds Average lifespan: 10-15 years (but 25 year old animals are recorded) " This is from a care sheet by cityreptiles.

So my big baby has three more pounds to go before she is of any safe breeding size. I'm in no big hurry, these are pets mainly, not a source of income.

How to post pictures; go to an image hosting site like photobucket and upload your picture so as to get an [img] then post that in with your message. Sorry someone stole your camera; that should be a hanging offense!!!
You can also upload to the photo gallery here directly off your hardrive files. You'll need to start your gallery, of course.

I forgot to add, once you have your pictures in the gallery here, when you go to post there will be a box below the message box listing your photos. Here is one of mine: