Has anyone had a yearling male breed? Whats the minimum length? Maybe with a female on her second heat/clutch later in the year?
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Male Honduran Breeding Size ?
davester
Jul 22, 2005 05:50 PM
Replies (2)
Rtdunham
Jul 25, 2005 10:35 PM
>>Has anyone had a yearling male breed? Whats the minimum length? Maybe with a female on her second heat/clutch later in the year?
>>
I sold one of the first pinstripe hypos i produced to a friend. The male grew rapidly, quickly was over 3' long. Because he'd grown to "adult" size so quickly, my friend bred him at about 10 months of age to multiple females. My recollection is he got 30-40 "good" eggs (he was also monitoring sperm deposition and reported sperm samples consistent with older males that produced large good clutches).
Unfortunately as time passed almost all the eggs failed. I think he ended up with only 3 or 4 babies. We hypothesized that although the sperm were present in sufficient numbers and appeared healthy and strong, there must have been something wrong with them that limited their ability to fertilize eggs successfully. We further hypothesized that age probably had something to do with that limitation.
But note this is anecodtal information. Someone will no doubt post information on a different male that DID breed successfully at 10 or 12 or 14 months. But that will be anecdotal info too. It's hard to generalize. But i've had a number of males that failed to reproduce at 20-24 months, certainly that has happened more often in my experience than having females of the same age not breed successfully. So my guess would be that though it's possible for a 10 month old male to breed, and it's no doubt happened before, it's probably not in the "normal" range of behavior.
terry dunham
albino tricolors
sdr
Jul 26, 2005 03:42 AM
Terry, thanks for the rich, informative account! Such a young male, producing what appeared to be a "significant" sperm population, and yet so few actual offspring produced from so many eggs that appeared good. So much for sperm counts, huh. I realize it's not quite theoretic, and IS anecdotal, but still thought provoking! Again, thanks for that brain "jump start".
Dale/Paradise,CA.
