Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I haven't seen anyone bring this discussion up so I'd figure I'd ask if anyone here has tried it before. I've been talking with my veterinarian(and a former herptoculturist) and he is also a strong believer that it could be done. The question is mainly a "how" to extract the sperm, than it is to inseminate the female.

We are both doing our research and plan on trying some new things with ball pythons, namely trying to combine sperm from two males to inseminate a female simaltaneously to potentiall produce two visible morphs(pastel and granite) in the same cluth(if we are lucky).

I believe this could be used to create some great hybrids, though I myslef have little interest them. Also, breeders could use that to "maximize" a male's potential when breeding with multiple females.

If anyone's tried this or heard of it being done, I would greatly appreciate the information.

My God what has this worl become.

Cole Maas

i see what your saying, you could make hybrids that werent possible before because of size and stuff like that.

or you can put the sperm of a king and a corn into a female gopher and get more hybrids from one clutch.

wouldnt artificialy inseminated snakes be alot of money?
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jake

my addiction:
2 normal ball pythons (lazlo and izzy)
1 amelenistic corn snake (mazy)

I like it. Also, one way of getting sprem could be somrthing that was posted before. In garder snakes, when they are exposed to very light shocks, they "Produce." Parhaps this needs to be resceached more, but I hope this tid bit helps.
Good luck. Cheers.
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Murphy's Laws:
"Nothing is as easy as it looks."
"Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

dont you mean garter snake
im not sure but i dont think there is a "gardner" snake
alot of poeple in my area who dont know much about snakes make the same mistake, they also think there is a "poisonous" snake called the "checkerdadder", and to them almost every snake in vermont is one of them, but every one has a different description for what they are but most are just eastern milks and black rats for their checkered bellys but nearly half of the snakes in this area display some form of checkers.

has any body from different parts of the country deal with poeple who think that there are "poisonous checker-dadders" in your area?

sorry if im boring you, i have a tendancy to ramble.
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jake

my addiction:
2 normal ball pythons (lazlo and izzy)
1 amelenistic corn snake (mazy)

The crudest way to retrieve semen is to allow two animals to copulate in a clean plastic tub. When they are finished, just suck the semen into a plastic syringe off the bottom of the cage.

You can also manipulate the female after she has copulated and squeeze semen out of her onto the cage bottom.

You could also try and manipulate it out of the male, but I have never seen this done.

I have only seen successful AI done in colubrids. I am sure the same techniques could be used in boids.

You can make some pretty wild colubrids using this method.

That's not a horrible idea, and I'm glad to hear that it has been done. Sterilization might be an issue, and I have to wonder how long snake sperm can survive in the hostile conditions outside of a body cavity. Do you know of any handling procedures used to store and or collect the sperm?

Anything you might do to "sterilize" the semen will render it nonfunctional. You don't need to - the cloaca isn't a sterile environment. Unless you have access to a liquid nitrogen freezer, I wouldn't try to store the semen at all - just collect and immediately use. It should be viable for quite a while (48 hours?) if kept moist and at endothermic body temp (75-85 degrees). Let us know if you have any success!

could you make something similar to a condom to collect the semen?
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jake

my addiction:
2 normal ball pythons (lazlo and izzy)
1 amelenistic corn snake (mazy)

Collecting the semen was easy.

Just wash your plastic tub out real good and collect the semen of the floor of the tub relatively quickly.

I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen the results when the babies hatched.

I know for a fact that the babies were a result of the AI and they looked like it also.