Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello All,

I visit this forum rather frequently but I must admit that I am quite the novice when it comes to posting anything. Please don't hold that against me

Anyway, on to my question. This is the first exciting year that I may have success trying to breed one of my pairs. I've had a pair together and showing active breeding behaviors since the end of Sept 2003. Also the pair has not eaten a thing since the beginning of Sept 2003. I believe that I caught the female's pre-ovulation swell a couple weeks back at the end of Jan. Then last week I think that I caught her ovulation. There was a noticeble swelling around the middle of her body during what I thought was her pre-ov swell and a very large swell mid-body during the following ovulation. Tonight the big girl is still pretty big and swollen, but she doesn't appear to be quite as large and round at mid-body as last week when I think she ovulated.

So my question is after females ovulate, is there a redistribution of weight or something? Or should the female's mid-body remain similarly swollen as when she ovulated? Better yet does anyone have a series of pics documenting a female's complete gestation period from ovulation to birth of litter?

Also, the male that is with this girl has definitely slowed down his breeding efforts but he remains in very close proximity to the female. I don't want to remove him til I know he's through with his "dirty" work, but what behaviors should I be looking for? Will he totally move away from the female once she has ovulated and is hopefully gravid?

As you can probably tell, I am extremely excited about this whole process. There is nothing better than observing the daily changes that may or may not occur during the breeding season. With that said, any information that you all can provide will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for the help and I'll try not to be such a stranger to this forum.

Regards...Jay

is that the pre-ovulation swelling is usually the size of a softball and pretty easy to miss (I could be wrong, so someone please correct me if I am). I'm not sure about the acutal ovulational swelling. At any rate, I haven't positively witnessed the actual ovulation in any of my females...mostly because they were coiled up with the males and I don't disturb them. Even so, I produced one litter in 2000, failed to produce one last year (I think I separated the pair too soon) and will hopefully have two litters this year (one I'm pretty sure of, the other girl is iffy so the male is still with her). With the female who produced in 2000 and with my best friend's female who produced in 2002, both of those females pretty much quit letting the males breed with them at all and set themselves up to basking in a piled-up coil right below the heat source - that's when I separate the males. Generally speaking I place my pair together around October/November and split them up around January/February when the females show no more interest in breeding. The females are usually starting to look more swollen by then as well, have darkened in color and combined with the basking making me have the assumption they're gravid. And I completely understand the excitement, as I'm sure everyone else here does too....just nothing like expecting baby boas. Best of luck and hope you get a nice pile of babies!

Raven

Thank you very much for your response. One more question, if you can clear it up for me, is when you say the female pretty much doesn't allow the male to breed her anymore, how exactly does she go about doing this? Does she simply make her "tail region" inaccessible to the male's advances? I'm currently seeing the male still on her so I'm having all kinds of doubts now, despite the big girl still being pretty husky in her lower half. Anyway, if you can shed some more light, I'd appreciate. Thanks again for your previous response and good luck with your expecting females as well.

Jay

I honestly don't know exactly what she does. With the one female, the male will be courting and breeding her daily until one morning I wake up and they're no where near each other. Granted they will sometimes take breaks from breeding, but when the male stays away from the female for more than a day or so, I usually separate them. My best friend experienced the same thing with her pair, hers were breeding daily all of the winter of 2001-2002 and then she woke up one morning and they were no where near each other. She left them together for a few extra days, but the male never attempted to court or breed after that. The pair I still have together is still showing courting and breeding activity , so I've left them together despite the fact that she seemed somewhat enlarged in her lower half the last time I got a good look at her. Perhaps I witnessed ovulation this time (don't really know), but I intend to leave them together until the male is no longer trying to court her just to be on the safe side (separated my pair too early last year and got nothing).

Raven