Reptile & Amphibian Forums

It seems to me there is little risk. If you're male is a "stud" and they copulate. The female should only produce eggs if her body is ready to produce eggs. Just like mother nature intended. So maybe you get a small clutch or small eggs, not really any harm in that is there? Curious if anyone has any horror stories of complications due to breeding a 1.5 year old female.
Thanks in advance.
Paul

>>It seems to me there is little risk. If you're male is a "stud" and they copulate. The female should only produce eggs if her body is ready to produce eggs. Just like mother nature intended. So maybe you get a small clutch or small eggs, not really any harm in that is there? Curious if anyone has any horror stories of complications due to breeding a 1.5 year old female.
>>Thanks in advance.
>>Paul

Mother nature and reality sometimes seem to have divergent ideas. I have not personally witnessed this in BPs but have had friends with other species where the female bred too young and became egg bound. Vet visits, aspirating stuck eggs and or surgery to remove.....Is it worth waiting a year?
I have only bred my BPs once, last year and she was 1535grams, 3yrs. She laid four eggs, two were 70grams each and two were 90grams each. The two smaller ones were infertile. She lost a pound of her weight. These were monster big eggs. I can see a BP getting one stuck.
I personally wouldn't breed a girl that light but others might and have more experience for you.
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Sonya

Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with the software.

Chances are she just will not produce.

I've had a young corn snake egg bind and know it is common for that species but a discussion came up on ball pythons egg binding and I've only heard of it happening twice and I didn't gather that either was a small girl (if the owners can please confirm). Both females survived, one passing the egg on her own eventually and one with the keeper massaging it out. So, it sounds to me like ball pythons are rather resistant to egg binding when compared to say corn snakes.

I did hear recently of a sub 1,000 gram female laying eggs, 6 if I remember right. Her owner indicated that she stayed small and continued to lay large numbers of eggs every year so I'm thinking she was sort of a mini ball python. Some have proposed that breeding a female early may stunt her and I suppose that could be the case here but given the large number of eggs I’m thinking they must have been very small so maybe she was just genetically predisposed to be a small ball python.

So, how do you know if your 1,000 gram girl is a near full grown small ball python or a baby big ball python? I guess if she lays eggs. I think this small one was rather unusual so I wouldn't count on her being close enough to her adult size to produce.

There is always a risk, any time you breed an animal. That said, last year, I had a first time female lay 6 fertile eggs at under 1300 grams (pre-laying weight) and 3 feet. All eggs hatched and the offspring thrive, although hatch weights ranged 50-60 grams. This season, she had reached 1700 grams before stopping to breed...she should be ovulating soon, so we'll see what she produces this year. I have another young female at 1100 grams that I decided to throw in with a male I wasn't even sure would breed yet (because I could feel obvious follicle development) and caught them hooked up for the first time yesterday. On the other hand, I had a 2500 gram 9 year old female prolapse delivering slugs and die. Consequently, she had delivered a bad clutch of eggs the previous season as well, although with no complications (she never laid any fertile eggs). Some are just better suited to be "breeders", same as any other species, I guess.

"Some are just better suited to be "breeders", same as any other species, I guess."

Where there any other noticable differences between that female and your fertile ones? Basically, would there be any way to determine who would be better suited for breeding? Other than body weight.

who believe we may have fraudulent hets. One of the guys is breeding his at 1,000g hoping to get a homozygous and ease all of our concerns. I was curious about potential health issues, because if she has complications this year it wouldn't help us at all, and if it resulted in reproductive issues next year it would be a total waste. My personal experience is a 5 pound 2.5 year old girl that gave me 6 114g eggs, 6 85g hatchlings last year. Don't know what she'll produce this year, but we're working on it. I sure hope a smaller girl will produce smaller eggs. I hadn't heard of an eggbound BP before, it seems they're designed to pass proportially huge eggs. Thanks again.
Paul

there'll be problems with dystocia (egg binding). It definitely happens with ball pythons. I've seen it in practice. The more people breed small females (to get a quick return-on-investment), the more cases of dystocia that will appear. Some people won't admit their impatience when their 1000 gm albino (or whatever) female binds up and croaks. Other females may recover slowly and then you have to skip a year to get the female back on track. So be careful folks. Remember GOOD things come to those who wait! Or is it the early bird gets the worm?!
Scott J. Michaels DVM

About how many times have you seen egg binding in balls and how would you compare it's frequency to other species of snake? Did you feel that small size of the female was the main culprit in the cases you have seen or were there other factors such as obesity or perhaps even diet (calcium deficiency?) that you thought might be important also?

The two breeders who each sited only one case last time this subject came up both had lots of experience (one tons of ball experience) so it led me to believe it was rare and got me thinking that I hadn't heard of it in balls before. However, like you point out, maybe it's just one of the things that many ball breeders don't like to talk about and not necessarily something balls are particularly good at avoiding.

Along those lines, have you ever heard of a ball asphyxiating on an oversized prey item? Years ago I foolishly offered a hungry milk snake the smallest prey item I had on hand assuming she would be able to back off if it was too big and tragically she wasn’t able to. I’m much more careful now and probably err on the side of feeding unnecessarily small meals to my balls. However, I have occasionally had them back off a meal that they must have thought was too large or more commonly had them not strike a large prey item but then feed when a smaller one is offered. So, are balls more likely than some other species not to get themselves in trouble with large prey or is this possible another case of drawing a generalization from too little data?