Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is kinda gross, but great in my opinion.....

I just witnessed these two hooked up again. Their first session lasted at least 12 hours....This time it has been over 7 hours. I do not know how many times they have actually hooked up....But when is it too much?
Seriously...I don't think there's such a thing as too much breeding. After these two decide they are finished with this hook up I will separate them and feed them. I do plan on using this male with at least two other females. When can I be sure that this female will become gravid and move him to the next female? The other two females are in their shed cycle now.
John Lassiter

Sounds like he is going to be busy for awhile!
Jim

I rotate them. I'll breed the male to a female, separate, wait a couple of days, feed, introduce him to another female, breed him again, separate, feed, wait a couple of days, etc...

Kerby...

That is what I initially planned to do but this female was ready far earlier than the others. When the other two shed I will start the rotating process....Thanks Kerby.
John Lassiter

So how wide is the window of opportunity? What if all 3 came out of shed on the same day? Not being sarcastic i just need to know because i will be going thru this condition soon.
Thanks Jim

Jim,
I think there is plenty of "window" for breeding. You can get all three females bred in one single week if they are all receptive. You can pair the male up with one female, witness copulation and separation one night/day. Let the male rest a day and feed the bred female. The day after feeding introduce the male to a second female and repeat the above steps until the females flat out refuse breeding. This has worked for me with Thayeri in the past...I am sure it will work with Getula as well.
Sometimes the females will not be receptive but by her next "turn" she usually will be. Also, sometimes the male will not want to breed...just give him another day of rest.
Again this is what I do, I wonder if Kerby or anyone else has a different approach...
John Lassiter

The window of opportunity is bigger than most people think. I too wait for the first shed (female's) before introducing the male into her cage. Sometimes the female isn't ready and will be a week later, sometimes not until her second shed. I would not wait until her second shed before you introduce them for the first time.

Like most people I am breeding certain males to certain females. I will keep up the rotation until I am sure that all females are gravid or they no longer show interest (immediate hook up).

I have bred one male to 4 different females with no problems on fertility. In corn snakes I have heard of a much larger ratio.

Sometimes I wait for the female to shed and then when I'm ready to introduce the male I find him in the "blue", so I have to wait another week. No problem with that either.

Kerby...

WOW.....it's much larger than i expected.
Thanks Jim

Jim,
I am still leary about the "window" sometimes, cause I never want to miss the opportunity, but a couple years ago I brought my breeders out of hibernation on March 1st. One of my female Thayeri did not want to breed until the end of May right before her second shed cycle. The strange thing is that she laid her eggs only 3 days after her shed and was only bred once that I witnessed in a week's worth of pairing.
She laid 6 fertile eggs and a couple slugs. All six of the good eggs hatched. I don't know if the first window was missed and she became gravid as if it was her second clutch. But she never laid a "first" clutch.....
A wise man told me once....."The snakes are in the driver's seat and we are just along for the ride...."

John Lassiter

Last year I bred these two three times. April 7th, 11th & 16th. She laid her eggs on July 2nd. That's 77 days after her last copulation. So obviously she retained her sperm until she ovulated. Most of my cal kings lay there eggs about 6 weeks (42 days) after ovulation.

Whenever I double-clutch my large females, I always breed the female to the same male so that I am positive of the genetics. But I guess there is always the possibility of retaining sperm from year to the next.....

Kerby...

I know wrong kinda snakes for the forum but they fit the topic.
I breed my Hypo Everglades last year and added a third wild caught glades "female" that I raised from a baby. The reason for the quotes is of course she was a he. I didn't notice till about a week later when I checked on them and notice she/he was getting beat up kinda bad by the bigger hypo male. As soon as I looked at the snake closer I saw my mistake. Fast foward to hatch time and my Hypo to Hypo breeding produces 1/4 normals. In thinking back the WC male must have got some too. I don't know if it was worth the beating though LOL. Unless somebody else has gotten normals from homo to homo mutation breeding? This is the only other explanation. So even when you breed two distinct morphs to a female you can still get some babies from each male, and have unsure others if there are hets involved. I have never heard of this before have any of you?

Speaking on the how is it possible. I am guessing that some of the eggs either didn't get fertilized in the first few breedings. Or the ova dropped after both males had made deposits and some eggs got fertilized by one and some by the other. Or still another theory is that some ova dropped and got fertilized and later some more dropped and got fertilized by the second male. Or... wait ... thats all I got.
It should be noted that the Hypo pair produced all hypos the year before. Also the fertility was low overall. I think 8 good eggs out of 14.
Thanks Jason

I know that Shannon Brown once posted on a forum that he bred 2 males to a female and both fertilized the female on the same clutch.

Kerby...

very good info.
Jim

>>I know that Shannon Brown once posted on a forum that he bred 2 males to a female and both fertilized the female on the same clutch.
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>>Kerby...

of course. and not really surprising. You have a quantity of semen containing sperm from two diff males....there are thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions (dunno, but WAY too many to count!) of sperm, and say in an average clutch a dozen find their way to an ovum...why wouldn't some be ones contributed by one male and some be ones contributed by the other male? It happens in humans, too.

and sperm retention is a pretty well known phenomenon, most of us have had a female we hadn't planned to double clutch, that goes ahead and lays again anyway, and some of the eggs are fertile, even though she was never bred again after laying the first clutch. That is why no one should EVER sell second clutch babies as specific genotypes if they used a different male for the second clutch (unless, of course, the second male is the exact same genotype as the first)

terry

Terry, I also saw on TV (science type program) a show on reproduction on humans as well as some animals. And it showed that if the female was bred to two males in a short time, that the first male's sperm would actually kill the second male's sperm as they advanced towards the egg. They even had a video showing the sperm killing other sperm. According to the study, they inferred that it was highly unlikely for the second male's sperm to make it to the egg.

Interesting stuff.

Kerby...

Terry you are right that it is obviously probable but it is something I just never thought about until it happened. Ofcourse like I said I thought I had a female but that was the other stupid mistake. Funny thing is alot of people want to theorize improbable stuff when I tell them it happened. Like the female had sperm from the year before that fertilized the eggs before any sperm from this year had a chance or that the hypo gene just didn't link up. Point is alot of people not only don't think about it like me but some refuse to believe it is possible. Thats the scary part.
Thanks Jason