Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I appologize if anyone has been irritated, offended, or bored with my retoric below.....it was not intended to go on so long but alas I felt responses were necessary. If you do not agree with my statements below but do not wish to post, please message me....I don't bite, lol.....I would really like your input. I'm really trying to gather good date to eventually put this matter to rest....either way it turns out. So anyone that has good reports of early breeding or bad reports, I would appreciate all the details you have, ages, weights, lengths, problems, no problems, hatch rate, mortality rates of mothers and hatchlings.....ages of mothers death, if she has passed.

Thanks much......
-----
Tracey
Tracey's Beardies
www.beardiecrazy.com

Tracey,

I'm trying to gather some data from some people I've helped with unintentional early breedings, I'll pass it along after I get it. One thing that is imeadiately clear to me though is that when this happens it is usually by inexperienced people who may not know what to do in preperation for eggs or care and proper incubation methods after the eggs come. This would lead to a much higher mortality rate than if they were with someone who is a more "experienced" keeper. This could severely skew the results of the study. Just a thought. I'll let you know when I get those #'s.

Sean
Heart Mountain Herps

Absolutely....those types of items....incubator not set-up before eggs layed, improper temps, incubation medium, etc will certainly be noted in all cases....I'm most interested in the long term well being of the female breeders in question, though of course there is a concern for problems with the offspring as well, but with circumstances you speak of that data will likely be skewed.

I know there are experienced breeders who probably do breed early and I'm hoping they'll share their data on the offspring as it would be more conclusive......their names don't even have to be mentioned if they do not want, good or bad info.....

I receieved a little so far from breeders who want to stay quiet....but mostly girls over 14-15 months.....

Thanks Sean....look forward to your input!
-----
Tracey
Tracey's Beardies
www.beardiecrazy.com

Heart brings up an excelent point. A lot of the early breedings are people that have not had dragons that long, and are generally inexperienced. Oops my dragons bred, the people that this happens to are obviously careless and might be towards the bottom of the barrel as far as husbandry techniques go. They do not know how to properly provide husbandry to a gravid female or to a female that has just laid a clutch of eggs (temps, diet, supplementation). These things can lead to a female becoming ill, egg bound, or losing so much weight that the pass on. This could be the reason why these early breeding lead to long term problems for the females health. I remeber that rob and vicki dachiu have posted about there experiences with accidently early breedings and having the dragons do fine in the long term (if I remeber correctly it was a 4 month old female that is still with them and about 6 years old). The best results would be from a breeder that practices early breedings and keeps detailed records. I just know from personal experience with 1 dragon (I know a very small sample size) that the dragon was bred at 10 months and is doing very well and about to be bred a second time.

Derek

agreed....all factors have to be taken into consideration....but you're also assuming they don't provide proper husbandry, so there may be some very good cases in which the animal was taken care of well even when accidental early breeding occurred.....some of which I have been witness to where problems occurred.....so it goes both ways, because someone is a "breeder" they may not provide proper husbandry as well and their data would be invalid as well....but other non-breeders who have an accident may provide good husbandry.

I'm aware of the accidental 5 month old breeding of Dachius in 1999 which would probably make her 5 yrs old about now....I won't dare to put their copyrighted info on the forum, but if you check out their hatch rates for the most recent year they have posted.....the group 18 months and over were more productive as a group and have a higher hatch rate as well....the other year is inconclusive though hate rates were fine as there aren't enough older dragons to compare to. Notice as well....if you take the 18 month old and throw them in with the younger group....they're percentages drop as well......
-----
Tracey
Tracey's Beardies
www.beardiecrazy.com