Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Man, I have huge CB female that is looking awefully suggestable, but my male pastel is still going through his awkward phase (300g). Anyone think I should try putting them together anyway? Otherwise I would like to try something this year...I just don't have anything to try...I'd buy a bigger pastel, but I'd have to get rid of mine to afford it...and well...I've grown rather attached to him.

Waiting for my pastel to grow...he did eat a jumbo F/T mouse for me today right after he came out of his shed.

If anybody has a nice male they would like to breed, maybe we could work something out? I don't know...just tossing around some ideas.

Mice are your problem. If you want your 300g male to be an 800g breeder, feed him rats.
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www.strictlyballs.ca

They're jumbo mice that are slightly bigger in diameter than he is. I was thinking about switching him to F/T small rats when ever they finish the 15 or so mice I have left. Do you really think a rat and a mouse that are the same size are different? I've always opted for 2 mice at a time over one rat. I've only had the guy for 2 months and for the first three weeks he refused to eat frozen/ thawed, since then (the last 5 weeks) he has put on about 150 grams and shed twice (he is eating 2-3 mice a week) He ate a couple of live rat pups for me when he was refusing F/T, but I don't want to risk feeding live adult rats. The last time I did that the rat and my adult male brown back collided. He got a good wrap on the rat and then the rat got a good chunk out of his side. Next thing I know he let go of the rat and looked at me with a confused look on his face, meanwhile the rat ran off and hid in the corner. My brownback refused to eat for 2 months after that and I had to apply neosporin to his side for a couple of weeks until he healed. So, I've decided that live rats can stay that way, but F/T would be good.

Apparently rats are nutritionally better for reptiles. Not sure why, I just always switched up as soon as they were large enough to eat them.It's obviously a larger meal, so is a better idea in that respect.

It does seem that balls will grow better on a rat diet then a mouse diet, I'm not sure why since they seem to be so similar nutritionally, just something I've observed. I've got a male pastel that is over a year old now and he's only 550g He will only eat live mice when he eats anything at all. He hasn't touched food in a month now. I doubt that your 300g male will breed although I'm sure you'll get responses saying that it'll work. It might, stranger things have happened. I've seen people claim that very young males will breed successfully, but it's more the exception then the rule. My 550g male won't touch a female yet, all he does is hide under the paper. At his age he probably doesn't want to get any girl cooties or something like that. I keep trying though, putting him in with different females, he's not eating anyway so I don't see how it could hurt. I suppose it could be bad if your big female layed on top of your little guy, but other then that it might be worth a shot putting then together just to see what happenes. They might breed. Like I said, stranger things have happened.

Yeah, I was thinking of maybe trying to put them together in March just to give him some improper thoughts....even if he didn't do anything, but i am also worried that the female could possibly intimidate him and make him stop eating. I guess we'll see if he gets any bigger by then or if I get a larger male.

LOL, girl cootie!!! that was good

The flipside to that is yes, they do breed, even though the male has no viable sperm, and the female gives you 8 eggs that are all unfertilized (slugs). You just wasted a healthy, fat female possibly for next year by breeding her unnecessarily this year with no success.
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www.strictlyballs.ca

IF HE breeds her..........he has viable sperm.....there is viable sperm before there is the urge to breed......
**(quote from Kev from NERD..) ask him....

...........

.....if he wants to he is ready.....

.......he may not want to till he is 12.....18 months old...?......

up to him....

may be too late for her anyways...maybe she won't want to.....

maybe she wants to and has already resorbed the ovum....

?......it all can happen........
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If what you mentioned is your method for feeding live rats, no offense but you should stick to f/t anything. Either feed restrained and responsibly or don't feed live. I don't want this to get into a whole live feeding VS. f/t debate again (there have been enough).
Yes, I do feel that a rat is more nutritionally complete for a ball than an equally-sized mouse. And even moreso if you compare 6 adult mice to one single adult rat. What happens when after you run out of those 15 mice you have in your freezer in 6 weeks or so, and your ball has decided that he likes mice? I would make the switch ASAP. Good luck.
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www.strictlyballs.ca

Well, a rodent is a rodent in my opinion. I am going to put a rat and mouse of equal size in a blender, centrifuge out individual components and do a complete nutritional analysis to prove that there is no difference. Much like galileo had to prove that the acceleration due to gravity was completely independent of the mass of the object falling, by throwing two balls off of the leaning tower of piza....

If my Balls like mice, they like mice and I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

Yeah, B/c BPs run into restrained or stunned animals as much as they do mice dusted in calcium powder (see above) in the wild...

I didn't really ask for any advice on how to feed rats, quite frankly I don't want to feed rats at all. IMO mice are better. They are cheaper easier prey items period. Anybody can feed rats if they want to, but I don't really see the reason

yea.mice suck....some of my females only weigh like 7 or 10 pounds.....maybe I should switch to rats too?.....

wow......

food is food........

............

if better meat is better...why is Atkins for losing weight?....

.........hmmmmm.......
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.....food is food.....

meat is meat?......................

.......................Atkins you say?.............

........if that's the case..............then why did the poor bugger die...................from a slip on the ice?.........................................
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www.strictlyballs.ca

if it was on ice..it would die...

?.I don't know why anything dies....I don't have it here to watch it .....

snakes are hard to tell of why they get sick or die..

I know snakes don't die from eating healthy mice....or rats.or hamsters......or anything healthy...

.......even sick mice won't kill them.....

....bad water?...too hot.....too cold....too much noise?....not enough humidity?.......etc etc

etc
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