Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm curious in others results with just Brumating males ? And secondly how did they pair or take to multiple females

I am not sure what the strategy of doing that would be, But, in natural function its backwards. Normally and I am observing this now, in the field, males emerge and bask aprox two weeks before the females emerge. I assume that time spend basking is to develop reproductive processes in time for the females to emerge.
ALso decades ago, when captive breeding had its first commercial demands, like timing hatchlings to be ready for shows. We had to manipulate the breeding season. Bring them up earlier. At first there was trouble with fertility on the first clutches, not the second or third. The cure was simply to not hibernate males. It appears that some types of brumation/hibernation, is too extreme and kills the sperm or hinders sperm development. Simply put, don't stress the males, too hot or too cold, and they maintain suitable sperm levels year a round.
This year, I am taking the opposite approach of what you questioned. I am cooling a number of females, and not the males.
Cooling or hibernating with western hogs is not required to breed them. In my case, I am working with wild caught animals. Then are already regulated to being seasonal. So I do not fight it, and will simply wait until their offspring mature and then I will choose to hibernate or not. I hope this helps, best wishes

Thanks FR I would be interested to see how your females clutches are with this approach

Its funny but all this is being done and has been done. There is no need to wait and see. A fella on another hog type site, just received nice good eggs from his female kennerlyi(what I am working with) and he does not cool his animals at all. 78F abient and 88f hot spot is what he reported were his temps. Which fits well with my past experiences.
My only interest in what your asking is Why? would you take that approach.
My test will not reveal what works well or not. The reason is, I will be using some very questionable males. In my group, I have one tested proven male, which is only going to be used on one female, the others will be little tiny, and even smaller, untested males. I do understand that hogs can successfully breed at a very small size. And many folks tell me that male hogs do not get large. Which seems to have some base. But, in the field, where these animals came from, I have seen males in the 20 inch, 24 inch and one 29 inches, which is identical to the size of mature females on that site. The largest females were 29 inches and one male was the same. So I have some questions about small males, mind you, questions are not answers. So yes, I am going to use a couple males in the 12 inch range. So yes, it will be interesting. One way or another.

Ah the why? I wanted to maintain feed females thru out the months of the males being down ,

that's my reasoning as well, my males are tiny. I just measured them. One axanthic that produced last year, is 15 inches. The two small axanthic males are aprox 11 inches, give or take some.

Hey FR thanks for the insight, I think I'll approach it differently next season I usually just go by the size of females ( most of them are 2012), I'm also curious as to how many females a male could handle to produce viable eggs however my thoughts were a Brumated male coming out the fridge has a few things it wants food and to release sperm ?