Reptile & Amphibian Forums

For those of you who have been breeding honduran milksnakes for quite some time now, just trying to get a general idea of the following:

1) What's the oldest age of your honduran breeder that is still alive AND actively breeding?

2) For the female honduran milksnakes, do you see any noticeable decrease over the years (like compare now when it first bred at 2 or 3 years old) in terms of number of eggs actually laid, good eggs from the batch and offsprings that hatched?

3) For the male honduran milksnakes, do you see less results of number of offsprings now that the male honduran is "old" (compared to when it first bred?

Thanks a lot for your input.

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RAY

The oldest was a 17 year old female.
She started producing smaller cluthes with smaller eggs at about 14. And My males usually do not get old because of some new morph taking over in the primary breeders.

Thanks,

Is she still producing and are the number of eggs continue to decline?

Tim (posting below) experienced the reverse on his 17 year old female hondo.

Very interesting.

Thanks again,
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RAY

Ray,

1) I have a female hatched in 1988. She still is alive and producing offspring. She is the oldest snake I have.

2) In my experience, clutch size increases with the size of the female. Therefore, number of eggs increases with age.

3) I don't have any old (I say 10 years would be considered old) males, but my eight year olds are as fertile as ever.

Tim

Third Eye

Tim,

Thanks for replying to my posting. I'd say incredible that you have a female honduran that's 17 years old already and still doing well ! That's a testament to how great a caregiver you are to these wonderful animals.

Apropos to your answer to my second question, does the number of eggs plateau at a certain age? Like a 2 year old female let's say lays 5 eggs, then it would be understandable to have maybe 7 or 8 eggs on her 5th year... but i am not sure if the number of eggs increase over time/age. I guess my real question is at what age do they lay eggs at a consistent same number of eggs year in year out? And would that decline as the snakes really get "older" ( I guess in your case, it does not decline).

Lastly, great looking albino you posted.

Thanks a lot !

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RAY

Ray,

Your question is difficult to answer. There are not that many people who keep the same snake for 15-20 years and also keep accurate breeding notes as well. So there's not much data to draw from. Since the "Honduran Craze" kicked in relatively recently, it makes getting a significant number of long term stats even less of a reality. I would certainly say that a 7 or 8 year old animal produces more eggs on average than a 2, 3, or 4 year old. Since Hondurans don't have very large clutches to begin with, it's difficult to determine if there is a "taper off" time; although I've never had a female over 5 years of age lay a clutch of less than 7 eggs. I've been breeding Hondurans for 14 years.

Tim

Hi Tim,

I was afraid of that... the lack of data since the honduran craze is, as you stated, relatively recent. That is probably why I only got a couple of answers from the forum.

Thank again for taking the time to respond.

Have a good one.
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RAY