Hey all,
I have all ready cooled my goins kings down to 50-55 degs for a few months, and I woke them up about 4 days ago. I have goten a few meals down the female and she has good weight, the male is still turning down food, but has hardly lost a gram. Today I put the male in with the female and they have been trailing each other around, jerking around, but no mating yet. I have been told you never want to take your eye away from them, and to remove them if they dont breed right away, its been about 1-2 hrs and no mating, should I remove them and try later? Or leave them alone for a few more hrs. Right now the female is burrowing, and the male keeps pokeing his head down to her head. Well thanks in advance for any advice,
Philip
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Need some breeding help here.
philip_s
May 18, 2003 03:16 PM
Replies (1)
rtdunham
May 18, 2003 06:03 PM
your schedule is atypical, most breeders would cool during the nov-feb period and bring their kings up in march, for example. I think most breeders will say that in addition to starting late, you're expecting things to happen too soon, that you would normally feed the female aggressively for 3 or 4 weeks and after her first shed out of brumation, then you'd start putting the male and female together.
But thtat's talking about norms, and there are always exceptions.
Regardless, if your female's burying herself she's not ready. Keep feeding, wait 3 or 4 days or more and try again, then wait and try again (unless you get a number of suggestions here telling you to simply wait til after a first shed to even try). When they're ready they're ready, and you'd probably quickly see them breeding (male pursuing, female stretching out, even raising her tail for him to explose the cloaca as the courts her by rubbing his body along hers, then copulation) (see pic). You can't force a pair that's not ready yet, to breed, you simply have to get in sync with nature's rhythms. Relax and be patient is probably the best advice. I'm sure you'll get some other points of view here. But I wouldn't leave them together, as you noted, especially when all indications are they're NOT at the proper point in their cycles right now to be focused on breeding.
good luck
terry
