Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My friend and I are trying a breeding project between her snake(that has all the yellow belly markers) and male big boy. When they were put together they started fighting. At first I thought maybe we were wrong on the sex of the female so I probed the snake and it probed female again(2-3 subscales). And I know my snake is a male. I separated the two but I was wondering what I should do to introduce them and not cause them to flip out again? She is 4 years old and never been around other snakes. Could this be the problem? My male has been housed with other snakes many times w/o problems.

Can you describe the fighting behavior? Are they both rearing up and trying to wrestle or are they trying to bite? If they are trying to wrestle with each other, you probably do have two males. Try reprobing the "female" again... sometimes it takes a few probings to accurately sex them. How experienced are you at probing? Have you tried popping them? Sometimes when you pop them you can pop out sperm plugs and if that happened when you try to pop the "female," you've definately got yourself a male. Good luck!

Eric

I have been breeding snakes(not balls, but kings, corns, boas, ect) for about 10 years and have alot of exp probing. I tried to pop the female and got nothing and the flesh is pretty light in color there(I know the males then to be darker) and I have probed her 5 times. I always got 2-3 subscales and also there are virtually no spurs at all. I am pretty positive that it is indeed a she. They were wrestling. I am having a feeling that this may be a dominance issue. Is that possible? Being that both of these animals have been kepy alone for a while and consider thier cages "thier territory". Also I know some species of snakes test each other's strength before mating, has anyone had this happen with balls before? Would it help to change cages do you think to one neither has even been in? I cut the lights out for a while and it seems to have helped(I am trying putting them together again as we speak. I also put another hide in there but neither seems interested in it right now.

Well... sounds like a female... however, it is highly unreliable to sex bps by looking at the size of their spurs; females have large spurs as well.

Are you placing the male in the female's enclosure? If that's the case, put the female in the male's enclosure and see what happens. If they are not really harming each other, just leave them together for a while, but keep checking on them. See if they settle down. Good luck! Hopefully they'll breed for ya.

Eric

Hmmm. I have never seen a male and female combat like males do. It would be interesting to know if anyone has seen a male and female combat.

I would thing you have two males. Also, what size probe are you using? Too large a probe can stop sooner than you would expect.
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Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles

never had pairs fight

maybe a little push or shove...but not really combatting...

I did have male to male wrestling ,combat,fights,bites,slams...etc

.,,,,,,,,,and yea.too big a probe will not go in and too small a proble will maybe poke a hole in the penes....

.......try again with them

I put male in girl cage.......easier to move male around all over the place..........
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..................gottaLuvIt!!

I have had this happen before with breeding loans. They have always turned out to be miss sexed males.
If you have another female that you are positive is a female put her in with the female you are questioning the sex of. See how they act. If the combating "female" is really a male he is probably ready to breed and will show interest.
Don't do this with a female you don't want to be bred because if you let them they may breed.
Kathy

The two fought every time I put them together yesterday. Finally, I put the female in a snake bag and left her in the cage with my big boy for about 3-4 hours. When I let her go at about 10:30 last night I had no more problems out of them. And, the best thing, they were hooked up this AM for about 2 hours. Took a break and are now working on it agiain! I guess they decided they like each other after all...LOL
Next question...new to breeding...what will breeding a normal(suspected new line of ghost, the only reason someone agreed to breed him to thier yellow belly 4', 2400grm female, I feel so privledged-) to a yellow belly produce? Also, I get pick of litter so which,male or female, would you guys keep if you were me?