Reptile & Amphibian Forums

When will it be too late to start the cooling
december???

I started about mid February last year. I was trying to get some extra females up to weight and just kept putting it off. My last clutches just hatched in the last 2-3 weeks. I was thinking maybe they could catch up a little with a late start but I don't think they did much. I'm going to try to catch them back up some this year but with the late egg laying most of them will still probably need to start a little late again this year.

Another interesting variable is how long to cool. I generally only night cool 6 - 8 weeks. In my limited experience that seems to be enough but I think many go much longer. I've had some females not go but they generally seem to be either the ones that are too skinny or too fat so I'm wondering if conditioning is more important than long cooling on a rigid start time schedule. I do think the cooler and dryer winter heating situation in North America helps to simulate the harmattan, a cooler and dryer wind that blows into Ghana off the Sahara mainly in January and February.

Thanx
i´ll wait a couple of months
Tom

If they are big enough you might as well go with the seasonal flow of whatever has worked for other breeders in your region. My reason for waiting was that my females weren’t all big enough so I posted just to show that it is possible to wait a little. I think ideally I would like to start cooling at the end of November based on the weather in my area but that’s really just a guess on my part.