Reptile & Amphibian Forums

First of all, I would like to sincerely thank the Breeders and Importers that helped with this and for those who did not, Oh well. First of all, I am not a Scientist and I have no great looking graphs to show and I have never won a Spelling Bee, but what I do have is Common Sense and I have tried to apply Common Sense to these ideas that I have been working on for a good while now. You guys and gals, may or may not find this interesting, but regardless I think enough of at least most of you to share it. Most of this info was put together as it concerns B.C.C. " especially Suriname and or Guyana Shield Localities " wich still tends to be the hardest to breed in captivity. Some of you may think; " Well, John there is alot of those particular Localities being produced these days almost to the point of too much surplus. " Yes, you would be somewhat right if some of you are thinking this, BUT it is not necessarily because we are starting to " break the breeding code" it is mainly because, there are much more of us out there breeding than ever before. Some of you may think, " Well, John look at Tudehope or Miller or Futo or Barrie ect. ect. these guys are some of the best at breeding B.C.C. " My answer to that would be, sure they are, BUT not even they are producing what they are capable of. I have said this many times before; " If you try to breed lets say 20 females and have litters from lets say 6 of them, you had a good year no doubt, BUT your percentages still kinda suck. When you produce from 15 of the 20, and do it consistently every season that you try to breed them, then I will be the very first one in line to buy your Boa Breeding Handbook!Now, it is almost baffling, when we are trying to figure out what causes B.C.C. to breed " consistently " how many of you guys and gals have had perfectly healthy pairs together and done everything that the " experts " have told you to do and seen nothing? How many of you guys and gals have had perfectly healthy pairs together and have watched them breed like wild fire for months on end and never see ovulation and still get nothing? How many of you guys and gals have had perfectly healthy pairs together and never see them breed the first time and Lo and Behold, you actually get ovulation and a healthy litter and you cannot see why? I have seen all of these scenarios and it is MIND BOGGLING!! So,were is my great information? Well, here it is and it is pretty simple when you use the process of ellimination, in conjunction with the info that I put together using outside sources and my own experiances. Done in questions. It has been said, females need to have a good amount of weight in order to be successfull producers, is this true? No, it is not. I seen pregnant females at the importers that were 4 and 5ft long and 6 or 7 pounds dropping large litters of babies. The smallest that I ever witnessed was a BARELY 4ft Guyana that had 22 beautiful babies. The importers that I talked to, agree that these small females having babies are more common than not.It has been said, females need to have alot of age on them in order to be good producers, is this true? Yes, for the most part, I believe as well as others that, age is more important than size and slow raised females who have alot of age and not alot of size, will be your better producers and definately more long lived, BUT that still does not break the code. Now, I will make another post for Part Two........Johnson Herp

It has been said, females tend to breed in the rainy season and that gives a cooling effect and cooling will help increase your chances of breeding, is this true? No, When I compiled this info, I found something shocking, gravid females are imported in at all different times of the year, but February, March and April are the months were the most of them come in and actually drop. When you count back, it does not even come close to the rainy season and seems to not matter as far as ovulation or parturition. The few times that I went to Suriname and Guyana, I seen females drop when I was there in January and also in August. It has been said, there are certain times of the year that you need to put your B.C.C. together, is this true? No, and yes. I tried to breed Peruvians back in the 1990s and was not successfull breeding them in the fall or winter and never was successfull until I breed them in the Spring and first part of summer. I have seen that Surinames and or Guyana Shield Localities seem to breed better in the fall and winter as far as the info compiled shows. The info compiled does not show enough evidence to FULLY BACK a " breeding season " , but it does show enough that you can definately increase your chances at certain times of the year, with certain localities. It has been said, multiple males will increase your chances of production, is this true? Yes, multiple males is always a great idea and one that is supported by nearly everyone in the business, but it is still not the code breaker. It has been said, day and night cycles are important to induce breeding, is this true? No, the terrestrial floor of the Jungle is pretty dark and gloomy and Boas can curl up in a dark log for days at a time and never see the light of day. Day and night cycles are more fore the keepers mind, than it is making a contribution to successfull breeding.......Now I will post the last, Part Three......Johnson Herp

Now to close. When putting all of these breeding strategies to the test and seeing what comes together and what does not, it is easy to see, that we are still very much in the dark about what it really takes to breed B.C.C. in high percentages and do it " CONSISTENTLY. " We have come a long way, but the code is still unbroke and NOBODY has broken it. Now, after looking at the process of ellimination, what worked and what did not, it all comes down to one possibility, ATMOSPHERE! Now, I want to bring a theory to you guys and I hope you will at least consider the possibilities or just call me mad. Why are B.C.I. more easily bred than B.C.C. and what does the Atmosphere have to do with all of this? I have been doing weather readings in the range of B.C.C. and B.C.I. for years and come up with something that I find at the very least, intrigueing. In the range of most of your B.C.C., the Barometric Pressure is always low and never even gets to 30.00 and in the range of most of your B.C.I. the Barometric Pressure wildly fluctuates, just like it does here in this country. Animals and even humans are very sensitive to Atmospheric changes and I am starting to believe, that this maybe, just maybe could be the code breaker!? When I first started researching this, I thought that the best time to breed your B.C.C. would be when you experiance the largest amount of low fronts in your particular area in the U.S. Now, I do not believe that as whole heartedly. I truly believe, that when you take a Boa from a range of constant low pressure and put it in a enviroment were it fluctuates, it just simply screws it up and this could be the very reason why, B.C.C. breeding is a hit and miss proposition, much more than B.C.I. Could it really be that simple?? Well, I know my last name is not Marzec or Henderson, but maybe, just maybe this old Hillbilly has hit it right for once. The most successfull breeders of B.C.C. seem to all have one thing in common and seem to agree on one thing inparticular and me also, each captive generation gets easier and easier to breed. F1s will be easier than their parents and F2s will be easier than their parents and so on and so forth. I believe that each generation gets a little easier because they are slowly becoming products of their own fluctuating atmospheric enviroment. B.C.I. are easier, because they do not experiance the same atmospheric stress and actually come from a range that the pressure fluctuates. Take this info as you will or do not take it at all. I am sharing it out of the goodness of my heart and if any of you want to try and start a stink and bash me, I will not give you the priveledge of a response. I hope you guys and gals enjoy and at least have it as food for thought.......GOD BLESS........Johnson Herp

Wow, that could be very possible about pressure changes. Snakes can sence a lot threw out there body, and the B.C.C.'s have a more sensitive feel towards anything.
Thank you for the info you have shared.

I have taken immaculate barametric readings and observations with both my BCI and BCC. I did see a similarity with my BCI(Colombians) and my BCC(suriname) but no correlations with the Peruvians(BCC). I get all confused when I look at the data. I'm glad you collected the data as well. I'm going to see about getting you a copy of my notes and raw data and see if you can see any direct or indirect correlations. I have yet to produce a litter of BCC but this year does look promising on at least 2 pair of Peruvian and a SuriXCol litter. Everything else makes sense and is really informative. I love seeing post like this and I truly wish more people would submit or give information that they know.

Here is a pic of my WC suri that was bred by MDC's albino. She just did her POS.

a pic of that Suri from when you first got her. Oh, and that is a super nice albino. Make sure he never gets sold to someone else, lol.

Matt

wc suri

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Thanks and take care - Joe Rollo
'Tis not the stongest of the species that will eventually survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change' Charles Darwin

np
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NO BEAUTY LIKE THE BEAUTY OF A TRUE REDTAIL !!

in order to prove this to be true or false there must be data collected by others to compare. i am sort of anal about recording data and taking notes on the life of my snake as it is and this summer i am hoping to get a female peruvian to breed to my bci. i will be taking notes and recording data about both their individual lives as well as when i attempt breeding. i think it would be a good idea to compare data from many different sources to look for convergences.

prove the difference between breeding bcc and bci ?? i could be wrong but from the breeding you are doing or want to do , this will all be irrelavant . im not intending to bash you or down you for breeding the 2 forms together .. not at all , but we are trying to see why its harder to breed bci to bcc.. here you will have one of each .
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NO BEAUTY LIKE THE BEAUTY OF A TRUE REDTAIL !!

maybe i missed the point, but one of the two would be a bcc and would still theoretically be more difficult and the information would help. in addition, the young would be bcc x bci and theoretically should be much easier to breed if this is a true theory. sorry if i got things wrong but i figured it would be just as hard if one was a bcc because that individual would still be reluctant to breed in the conditions (it takes two to tango).

i meant it was harder to breed bcc than bci .. i wrote it the other way around .. sorry .
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NO BEAUTY LIKE THE BEAUTY OF A TRUE REDTAIL !!

yeah i can understand what your saying but like i said in my other post, wouldnt it be just as difficult to induce the single BCC to breed with the BCI as it would be to induce a BCC to breed with another BCC. ill be recoding data reguardless but if it is wanted to compare then ill gladly provide it, if not i would still like to see other data to compare to my own as theoretically my male who is a BCI should have different behavior from the female who will be a BCC.

All things aside, it requires TWO willing boas to breed. BCC seem to require more time to maturity and more extreme cycling temps. To have substantial age and get the temps right for two BCC seems to me to be more difficult than it would be for a BCI and just one BCC

Since in any situation, two mature AND willing animals are required, and since it is more difficult to find mature BCC (due to unknown ages, less CBB animals, more years required to mature them, etc) AND cycle them in the more extreme fashion, it would be more difficult to produce BCCxBCC than BCCxBCI.

Just my $0.02.

i understand it is more difficult as it is one otehr difficult snake to deal with. that is like saying it is more difficult to fix two cars with the same problem then it is to fix one car which is obvious. but the information obtained from the one would still be relevent and helpful in the big picture. with catching so much slack from attempting to help i guess my information is not wanted. no hard feelings but i would still like to get teh data from others to compare because in my eyes im still attempting to get one BCC to breed reguardless as to weather its with another BCC a BCI or a green tree python.

In all of this, you missed probably the most distinguishing factor that probably keeps most from getting their BCC to reproduce: not using an approach to seasonality (seasonal temperature cycling). Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying they are easy to breed. I am merely saying that I don’t think a lot of people take the time to approach breeding with the one most statistically, positively correlated tactic we have been taught: seasonality.

I have personally talked to several people whose BCC “wouldn’t breed no matter what they tried”. When I asked them what their hot spot temps were, most of them couldn’t even tell me. Even those who did know still didn’t have a plan of varying those temps and a timeframe for it all. A definitive plan based on some evidence is often lacking. If you can’t quantify what you’ve done, how can your truly and accurately repeat or describe what you’ve done? It’s difficult.

The large discrepancy between successful BCC and BCI reproductive efforts is amplified by the fact that BCI are mostly represented by successive generations of CBB animals that are more acclimated whereas many more BCC animals are WC and somewhat less acclimated. It is even further amplified by the commonly observed fact that, as a general rule for the majority, the BCI require a significantly smaller gradient in temperatures to induce reproductive behavior. Thus, these necessary criteria for BCI are more easily “accidentally” or “effortlessly” met than they are for BCC.

Many Surinam BCC owners do not know the maturity (age) of their animals and this ads to the “my BCCs won’t breed” hype that many of us have heard.

There are probably more and more BCC that are CBB now not only because there are more and more CBB mature acclimated adults (F1 and F2), but also there are more and more people joining this hobby and the internet has become a portal to share the hobby and techniques. I know I (and several others) wouldn’t have figured out the things I have if Derek Yagi, Rob Tudehope and a few others had not shared ideas.

My main question to all breeders out there would be this. What is a good running average of experienced keeper’s successful attempts at getting BCI pairs to reproduce versus the same breeders successful attempts at getting BCC to reproduce and compare that with what seasonality approach they are applying to each. This would tell us a lot. Talking about barometric fluctuations is fine, but it is something we’ll never control without a pressurized, climatic laboratory at our disposal. Comparing and manipulating WELL DEFINED, geographically specific seasonality approaches is likely the way to get better success ratios for everyone.

By the way, when did the premise that female BCC tend to produce more/more frequently than younger ones become YOUR theory? I have heard many others say it for years.

Much of what you’ve said here was clearly stated in Ross and Marzec’s book The Reproductive Husbandry of Boas and Pythons. It has been said differences in elevation origins of specimens may play factor (also clearly stated by Marzec), and in listening to many people for several years there’s doubt that barometric fluctuations influence behavior. Thinking on paper, it also is logical that there are LOTS of other environmental differences that F1 and F2 animals become adapted to OTHER THAN barometer fluctuations, many of which we probably don’t know or ever will. Thus it is not prudent to associate the generational increased breeding success with that one variable alone.

For a guy who says “my last name is not Marzec or Henderson”, you sure used a lot of info you probably got straight from pages 209-213 of their book or from somewhere that cites these sources.

First off, I never said, " That older females being more readily bred than younger ones, was my theory. " I put info together that I have been gathering for years now and simply showed what has worked and what has not worked and brought other possibilities to the table. I also said; " That it has shown that breeding at certain times of the year, can enhance ones chances of successfull breeding, but it was not shown to be the code breaker to successfull and more-so " CONSISTENT " breeding.I was one of the first ones to purchase Marzecs and Hendersons book years ago and use to do alot of business with Richard. There is alot of good info in the book, but like it or not, it is outdated and I have told him the same thing. As far as imports verses captives, I also made it clear that the generations of captives get easier to breed than their original import parents, but the question is why? You talk about seasonality, well Matt I will tell you as I have told others; " before you question my theory on seasonality, take a trip down there to the Jungle and see for your own eyes what I have seen and then come back and talk to me about seasonality. " You will find gravid boas in Suriname and Guyana Shield Region, at all different times of the year and alot of their births do not even come close to the theory of ovulation and birthing during the rainy season, wich is December and January and then in May and June. This " old time theory " was why breeders have passed down over the years to cool B.C.C.They have argued that these animals breed during the rainy season, wich in turn causes a cooling effect on the animals. Can we agree on that? If you have been around for a while, I know you must have heard that before? Well, that is " BULL CRAP " and a little trip down there will show you that I am right and not loony toones. Not to mention, the temperatures are pretty consistent down there year around. Here is another example; " Argentines, are from of course, Argentina and you would think that you would definately have to cool or cycle these boas in order to produce with them consistently, BUT a good friend of mine produces more of them than anyone else in the country and was one of the first to do so and breeds them in 90 degree ambient temps and has NEVER cooled them in any shape or fashion. In Argentina, the Atmosphere is also unstable like here and the range of B.C.I. " To me, the evidence points to Atmosphere and the stress of being brought to a different one, I feel is the key and each generation will get easier to breed as they get further away from their Atmospheric Instincts, but we have alot of generations to go probably before we start breeding with consistentcy. I hope to build this Barometric Pressure Chamber one day, young Matt. If I am wrong, I promise to give you the honor of hearing me say, I am wrong. Until then, take a trip to the Jungle and keep an open mind and forget what the preachers have said and judge for yourself. Hope to give you a firm handshake in Daytona and maybe chat over a cup of Joe!.......Johnson Herp

Just for the record, I am not trying to look smart and make everyone else that has developed some of these breeding theories look stupid. I have no desire to write a book or an article for Reptiles Magazine. I am simply bringing another possibility to the table and at least I do try to contribute something around here. I have been on here for years and it was nice to find out a few months ago through numerous E-mails that I have helped alot more people than I have pissed off and pissing people off has never been my intention, but sometimes it is necessary it seems.I see alot of these breeders around here that everyone seems to respect and hail as successfull and woe at their magnificent animals, BUT I have seen VERY FEW actually post anything informative as far as breeding and husbandry. I do however see them put up alot of pictures, to help promote their sales. Right or wrong, at least I do contribute something occasionally, it would be nice to see some of these " Big Timers " do the same.........Johnson Herp