Ok, I have been pairing my ivory female and gravel male a little over 2 months, and they have locked every time About 3 weeks ago she went off food and started hovering around the cool end of the tub. Hot end sits around 89 and cool end around 79 degrees F. She has since stopped hovering at the cool end but little interest in food. I’ve tried different size rats and ASF as well as different colors live and pre-killed she stills shows little interest. Before this her feed response was great.
At the vet today she weighed in at 2653g. A friend of mine is a vet tech and offered to do an ultrasound on her, she has 8 follicles the biggest of which was just over 3mm, the rest were around 2.5mm.
This is my first year attempting to actually breed, so from what I have read I wasn’t expecting her to go off food until she was close to ovulation. So have others experienced the same so early or should I take this as a sign she is going to reabsorb the follicles and stop pairing for the season?
They all go off feed a different time depends on the animal, I have females that will eat until they ovulate, I have had female taking 1 or two meals after ovulation and I have some that will stop eating s very early on soon as being paired.
All you can do is keep pairing her at this point to keep stimulating that follicular growth and keep in mind that when the follicles will be the size of a dime you female will be prime for breeding, follicular development can take 4 to 8 months total between start to ovulation.
Good luck.
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Woke up to do my morning spot cleaning and saw this when I opened the tub.
this is from 1/3/20:
She’s not the easiest snake to photograph .
She’s not the easiest snake to photograph. When I try to hold her up to get a picture of the bottom third suspended she curls her tail no matter how well supported. Despite not eating again the other night for the 6th straight week she looks like she ate a large rat. She hasn’t shed since right before I started pairing her a couple months ago, and she is still locking, as of last week.
it’s only been 2 weeks since she was ultrasound, and as far as the vet tech could tell the follicles were only 3mm, so too soon to be ovi. The only vet in the area that deals with reptiles is on vacation for 2 weeks.
My concern is something is wrong with her, it’s possible the vet tech got it wrong she’s never done an ultrasound like that before, but I doubt it.
It looks like a possible ovulation to me.
Some other ways to check is look under her tail — it should look “caved in” as if the fat is being sucked out.
Another sign is she’ll look like she has a little “shelf” by her belly… it’ll be like a little crease going along the side of her body, right around where the sides meet the belly scales
If it’s not an ovulation, it could just be a really big build. I’d just keep an eye on her and watch for the signs I mentioned above.
I’d also write down the date and keep track of things anyways, if it is indeed an ovulation she should go into a prelay shed within the next few weeks
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couldn’t get a good picture, but tail did look sucked in, no shelf. Just on the off chance it was a build put asphalt male back in got a lock within an hour.
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