Instead of thinking of ways to boast your fertility, how about looking at how you lowered it. Again a disclaimer, don't be offended and no one is better then anyone. After all, were snake guys how good is that? (for us, real good)
a normal male produces good viable sperm, a normal female produces good follicules/ovum/eggs. Normally snakes reproduce without problem. That is their design. But things do happen both in nature and in captivity to change that.
In nature this is known and used by our game and fish departments, they base their take, on the recruitment of that years particular game species, higher recruitment, more take.
That analogy is only to start you thinking, its an ok comparison to reptiles, but not really. With mammals, food source is a direct link to production, as it is with reptiles. But then reptiles are not warm blooded so there are other influences.
Reptiles are not only tied to Calories(food) but also to weather conditions. Too dry, too hot, too cold, too wet. All can stress wild reptiles.
What does stress do, It causes harm, loss of weight, dehydration, and one huge one, atrophy(wasting away) of the sex organs. This was/is thought to be normal by some biologist. In fact, they would use preserved speciems to deterime what was there active season, but the size of the males internal sex organ development. Of course I am a goofball and do not agree. I agree thats its common and happens in nature, just not the how and why.
I think/know you find males with developed gonads, year-a-round. And males with undeveloped gonads, year-a-round. The successful breeder males develop enlarged gonads, these are the males you find in dens, groups, around females, etc. The subordinated males that you find constantly wandering, are the males that have undeveloped gonads. Which are the easist to find?
What that was all about is, in captivity, you and atrophy the gonads with stress. The problem is, you do not know which male has a full tank or empty tank or mobile sperm. You can check. But why?
All you have to do is not stress the male. I was amoung the fellas who invented hibernation(no brumation yet) OK, bears did, we did it with reptiles. Problem was, we did not understand it and that may be happening here.
Its my opinion, forced hibernation/brumation is stressful and without question can cause atrophy of the gonads. Which causes a horse race, will the female produce follicules before the male regenerates his gonads and produces viable sperm???? as you have witnessed, sometimes you win the horse race, sometimes you lose, sometimes you get a consulation prize(a few offspring)
When we first encountered this, back before most of you were born, a quick fix was, do not hibernate the male and his tank does not go empty. Or figure out what hibernation really is or is not.
So, to not have to reinvent the wheel and redo the whole nine yards(still wondering why its not ten) Allow males a choice of temps, heck, you can do that with females too. Then sperm is there when needed and not when the horse catches up. Whoops too late. But then you would not be hibernating or brumating, you would be allowing free choice. hehehe.
As with everything, there are degrees of results, those who hibernate with success(to them) are doing a good job. Those that hibernate with poor success, are not. You only need to fix the last one. Of course you could change your level of what you call success.
I have been using the monitors as a comparison, in that area, success is having your pet monitor around tomorrow, anything else is gravy. Here success is at a different level.
Again, without seeing your animals, I cannot make strong recomendations. But I commonly see this problem. and what I said may help. Think about not stressing the male. Surely it could be other things then hibernation. Also, in much rarer cases, the sperm dies in the female.
This can be determined by the eggs. But thats for another day. Your experience sounds like lack of viable sperm. Good luck FR
