Reptile & Amphibian Forums

As much as I hate seeing these... These animals are so amazing to leave nothing to waste.

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Ben R.
Renick Reptiles, Inc.
www.benrenick.com

An unfortunate outcome for you, but an excellent photo. We experienced the same thing last year and it is definitely a big disappointment. Jud’s male was bred to a female I raised up from our 2001 litter. She was a good sized green, almost 14 feet and well over 100 lbs. She ended up dropping close to 30 unfertilized ova and not one neonate. I found her in the same position you found yours; in the process of eating the ova. Like your female, this was her first breeding. However, I am not certain if that is a factor with greens as I have seen it go both ways with first litters. The eating of ova appears to be standard behavior as all of our females have shown this behavior. Additionally, all of our successful breedings have had litters that were composed of at least 30 % unfertilized ova. This does not appear to be too uncommon with greens.

I believe that green anacondas are the most difficult of the larger boa or python species to successfully breed in captivity. Most captive breedings don’t even result in unfertilized ova, let alone living young. You could almost count on one hand the number of true captive bred litters produced in the U.S. in the last 10 years. I think keys to success are fully mature, good body weight, completely acclimated greens that are light and temp cycled at the right time of year.

I was trying to remember the sizes and ages of this pairing of yours, and was curious as to the number of ova that were dropped by this female. She’s a beautiful female, and looks really nice and healthy as well. You are on the right track and I think that this female has great potential and will produce for you in the future. Keep up the good work.

Kelly

Thanks Kelly! In this pairing the female was around 5 years old and around 11' or so, she eats like a pig, just hasn't grown too much over the last couple of years. The male is around 4 years and 9' or so.

She looked like she had already eaten a good number of them whenever I found her, but there were 13 left (including the one she was currently consuming).

I actually had to move into the new building mid-way into her development, so I'm sure that could have played a small roll as well. I had actually bred two females last season and this was the only one that took from it. But I'll try again this year and see how it goes!

Thanks again!
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Ben R.
Renick Reptiles, Inc.
www.benrenick.com