Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a 5' '01 animal scarfing medium rats and am thinking about breeding her in the coming season.

What do you guys think?? She too small on size?
I started lowering temps, but should I reduce the day light period as well? Should I mist or keep the tank dryer? Any hints from successful melanarus or related breeders would be helpful!
THANKS

A.C.

A.C.,

I am going to go out on a limb here.Realize that this is just my opinion, please as is not set in stone.

Haveing said all that:

First:I wouldnt even think of breeding your melanarus Female, in my opinion she is TOO SMALL. 5 feet in length does not a good breeder make.6 fot is better. 7 foot even better.

Second: The snake you mentioned is TO YOUNG. If she was hatched in 2001, that would make her no more than two years of age, which might be a great age to breed kingsnakes that have been fed heavily, but alousy age for Drymarchon.

IN MY HUMBLE OPINION
You will get better results keeping her for another year or TWO years then by atttempting to breed her NOW. If she DOES produce, she may indeed produce a small clutch of eggs,and the likelyhood of her becomeing eggbound increases dramatically. ONCE she does become eggbound, it may require surgical intervention, a costly and time consumeing process. Eggbinding makes her predisposed to recurrent eggbinding in the future, as the oviduct can be damged in the process.

In short, its really not worth it just to get a few babies next year. Better to wait , allow the snake to grow larger and gain more age. If shes eating medium rats now, you probably wont have any problem putting either weight or size on her. But please realize that, even though they are gluttons, even Drymarchon can be overfed anf grossly so.

Again, some may disagree, and I respect their right to do so, but thats MY take on it.

*Cheers*

Fred Albury
Aztec Reptiles

First let me say I have not bred melanurus. Good news is I'll bet they have smaller eggs than couperi or erebennus (yt eggs are much smaller)

I know bt's can lay a lot...so eggs are probably smaller too.

But...I think Fred's right, she is too small AND too young.
It surely possible that she'd breed and everything would be fine...but your odds of having problems (namely egg-binding)
are WAY higher than if you'd wait until next year.

Get her to 6'...I'd hate to have you kicking yourself if something went wrong.

As for breeding methods...I'd guess Dan Felice's methods for breding unicolors would be best to mimic...I'd get his input.

I have an '01 female couperi that's just about 5' also.

...and there ain't no way no how I'm even THINKING of breeding her until at least next year. Even that's a maybe.

NP