Here is another little Boa Breeding nugget for everyone.
This never gets old for me. NEVER! Every year I see something new. Something that puts an additional little twist to help me be successful with my Boa Breeding trials. I am not one of those guys who needs no help and breed every single female every single year they try. Not me. I still struggle to determine the what and how of breeding my animals. When I seem to trip over something new, I love to post it so that others can learn from it and then ultimately they tell how something they read that I wrote came true. It’s great fun for me and very satisfying. 
So… for the latest little nugget that I observed last year and have seen repeat itself this season…
This is particularly valuable to know and use when closing in toward the end of the breeding season. The trick is, without an ultrasound, to determine who might be vulnerable still to a successful breeding, and who likely is NOT going to be a good female candidate for breeding. My own animals now are about two and a half months into the 2011-2012 breeding season. Not all the females have had a male in with them from the start. I put together the most important males in with the most important females that I think are already looking available. That is females that appear to my eye to have decent sized developing egg follicles. When some of those females ovulate, or when they do not seem to be responding to the males that were introduced, I can then move those males in with the second string females that may be ripe for the picking. It’s at this time of year that I always seem to have several females that will ovulate after very little courtship and breeding by the male. That is a beautiful thing I love to see happen.
I feed every 3-4 weeks during breeding season. This season I have only done so every four weeks. Each time I feed after breeding has started I have a female or two or more that refuse a rat. They just back off showing zero interest in the steamy goodness that rats are. These are often females that have been breeding that are very near an ovulation day. Not taking a meal is a very good sign of the an impending ovulation. Those females are already turned a bit more dingy than the normal bright color. The exception being Albinos and Sunglows that never seem to lose their luster. Some females will feed reluctantly for the exact same reason. Ovulation is a comin round the bend! (I just wrote that with a western cowboy like drawl going in my head… hehe) Most of the Boas, male and female alike with eat and did so for me this past Saturday (February 18, 2012).
Now here is the nugget for anyone who is panning for gold out there… (I crack myself up)! Females that eat and have egg follicles that are quite large will swell up disproportionately from this meal. For instance, one of my females was already looking really thick in the back half. Thick and round. Not solid or muscular looking but more like a water balloon would look. This is a 30 lb. big girl. I gave her one jumbo rat. Normally this would not really even make a lump in her. Today, just two days later she is gigundous! That is a technical term. Gigundous!
She is massively engaged in pre-ovulatory activity and the meal has pushed her to massive proportions of her normal condition. She is an extreme example of this. Many other females that are not quite as close to developing mature egg follicles after eating a meal will also be a LOT larger than normal after a meal. Making this observation helps me to better decide where to concentrate my still willing males for the greatest likelihood of success. Got it!? The nugget is when a female swells up much larger than you would normally expect, that may be a sign that she is very close to being ready to ovulate. This happens both in females that have been courted heavily AND in females that have not been courted at all. I observed a number of females today that are getting males in with them now because they have flown that red flag of availability that I recognized today.
Another interesting thing I have noticed is that the feeding of the meal, I think frequently pushes the female into an ovulation. I have one female in particular that started ovulating last night and is in full blown major ovulation mode today. I actually observed four females today that either for sure are ovulating now or will in the next day or so. Big chunky girls are a beautiful thing in my world.
So that’s the latest little nugget.
Great fun!
I’m VERY excited about this female that refused a rat on Saturday and is ovulating for me today!
Who bred her? Great question. This little guy did!
I can’t wait!
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Jeff Ronne Sr
The Boaphile
Director USARK
Originator of Boaphile Plastics
The Boaphile Boa Site
