I would agree with you due to doing otherwise would show in the quality of the hatchings produced. If people are in a ‘rush’ to make a combo or some rare hets, it is safer just to use a male, though I understand this is not about males but females and their ability to be bred at 1200g. Yes, they can and obviously will produce a healthy clutch, same thing, I can breed a big, long female of an older age. I personally think this comes down to age then a weight line (obviously not talking about a stunted animal, but we can assume that she might produce smaller eggs or egg bind as an effect)
By an age and further on they are a weight were there body has the capability of reproduction, if seasoned appropriately.
Growth, weight, have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with snake breeding. As a matter of fact, the human intervention has nothing to do with it. I have been telling people this for years. Ball pythin females are in 100% total control of when they breed. In the wild, where there are no humans stopping them from doing what comes natural, females can and do breed much younger than what we would consider “breeding weight”. They also have the ability to retain a males sperm for many years. Prime example of this, a few months ago at a St. Louis Zoo, a very old mature female who has been in her enclosure by herself for the past 15yrs laid a healthy clutch of eggs. At first researchers thought this had to be a partho clutch. But when the babies hatched it was clear she had retained sperm from a pairing many years before. I said that to say, when it comes to snakes, we simply cannot compare anything biology wise to them. Reptiles in general are very extraordinary, and unique.
I have to disagree, but I only have what my brain is telling me and no actual evidence to back up why I disagree… So take it with some salt. I understand I’m being a bit picky of your wording also but … Hey, I’m here now and I’ve started typing
I personally don’t think they even know what’s going on. I assume that, even on their 3rd/4th clutch, that they wouldn’t connect “that time me and that other snake wrapped up together” …led to… “oh, I’m laying babies again”.
All they know is what their body/environment is giving them signals for at that time. They react to it instinctively.
Regarding retained sperm, I don’t think they even know they have been inseminated to begin with, and because of this, their body is designed to retain sperm until the optimal conditions (weight, size, health, weather, environment) arise.
I don’t think there is any conscientious decision making going on from the snake itself, but rather a mix of health, hormones and the need to scratch an itch it can’t reach
I go on individual basis. I will at 1200 if my girl has good body condition, on feed. I have a calico now that is 1300 grams but very lean so she wont be bred. I feel that as a keeper it is my responsibility to make sure my animals are in good body condition to breed. My big leopard (3500 grams) hasnt laid at all and i think its because of her size. She has been on a diet and in a vision cage now and taken out a few times a week for excercise and muscle building well now she also has 34mm follicles.
I hatched my first ball pythons 23 years ago but have a relatively small collection so a kid who jumped all in 2 years ago may have a bigger clutch count experience already.
Anyway, my two bits are that I believe back in the day when most ball pythons were imported we MIGHT have had more genetic variance. My first clutch came from a 1,500 gram 4 yo female. She ate great and produced 5-7 egg clutches each year for a good number of years before passing on a breeding loan for reasons I don’t know. She never got over maybe 1,700 grams. She was actually captive bred at a time when most weren’t yet but perhaps one or both of her parents were from an area were ball pythons just don’t get very big?
I think in the last 20 years of selective morph breeding we may well have also selected for larger ball pythons and in many cases more aggressive (with the thinking they will eat better). However, I would expect there to still be some genetic smaller ball pythons out there for which a general weight rule about when to breed would not apply. Incidentally I’m several generations down that line with constant outbreeding to unrelated males to add new mutations and the daughters and granddaughters are getting bigger but some are still a little smaller than average.
Sorry such a long post to say I vote team “if the look and act ready give it a try and let them decide”.
Generally my females don’t decide to breed until a year or two after I would like them to but the only egg laying related problem I’ve had was with a huge female many clutches in that hung on to a few eggs an extra week or two before laying. Maybe muscle tone and fat are a bigger risk to egg laying than small size? Not only not a scientific study, not much of a sample size in my case but maybe something to look into.
I definitely think this is true. We’ve usually used weight as a benchmark for when a snake is ready to breed. So the larger snakes are usually bred first. And if a breeder is deciding which snakes to hold back and breed again they will usually choose the largest and/or best eating.
My son has an ultramel girl little bit over 2 yrs old at 1700 grams and she’s been going through a growth spurt. Also has a blk pastel, pastel, pied girl about 2yrs old. She’s at about 2000 grams. Because they are both still going through a major growth period we aren’t going to pair them yet. Just rather let them reach full potential before breeding. May not matter either way … but we figure it can’t hurt and most likely will result in overall bigger females in the end.
Well said. Only, your entire comment was based off of what “you think” . Listen, i get it, everything i said could be a bit much to take in and believe. But my comment was not based off of my opinions, those are all facts. You are more than welcome to research for yourself. But the female is in absolute control of her body, and when she wants to breed. Ever heard of a partho clutch? This is when breeding conditions are optimal, there are no males around to breed, the female will lay eggs on her own, and the hatchlings (by science-based info) should be carbon copies of herself. If this isnt body control i dont know what is.
Also, i am a breeder myself, i have hundreds of ball pythons and from what ive learned from dealing with them over the years, the female is most certainly in total control of when she lays eggs.
Ask any breeder the biggest frustration of any project. Their answer will almost always be “i paired her and she didnt lay for us this year” That is because you can pair her however many times you like, and with however many males, if she doesnt want to, she wont. And she can pick and choose from which retained sperm she wants to use.
Wrong your in totAl control she is in a box in a rack. You control the temperature, you control the introduction of males, and you control food intake. How exactly is she in total control? A female will lay even when it’s not in here best interest health wise she is a snake she doesn’t have human emotions to decide. So as a keeper it’s your responsibility to put the animals health first sadly a lot of breeders are more concerned with profits/projects than the animals health
There is legit zero benefits to a female laying before there finished growing that’s a fact. Note one single benefit for the snake only you.
A snake is a living creature and deserves to be afforded the best life we can give them.
Sir, i just read this thread. I am not the lady you were arguing with. I am also not the one for the arguing. Slow your roll and re-read my comment. You are correct in all that, but like i said, You can be in control of all the things you listed, but if SHE does not want to lay, she wont. And to piggy back off of what she tried to tell you, this is something youd know if you had been breeding for 20+yrs like myself, i have 300 ball pythons currently. I am not in anyway down playing your operation, and i actually agree with your theory on the whole 1200gram thing, but, after doing this so long, you realize, they are in total control of actually becoming gravid, and later laying eggs. Im not the only one saying this, scroll up, and you will discover another bigger breeder saying the exact same thing.
I’ve been breeding ball pythons for nine years have 60 and bred my first snake a blood python in 2002.I read your comments your trying to justify your practices but name me one benefit to the snake breeding her before she is finished growing.
Some Big breeder are some of the worse offenders ethics wise.
If we don’t start self policing our community the government will and that is the LAST thing I want.
No it’s our self interest but why give animal rights group more reasons to attack our hobby. What happens when the humane society finds out puppy mills are breeding dogs at 10 months? Don’t think they won’t come after us as well.
Why not just wait till she is finished growing? It’s the least we can do considering we keep them in boxes.
We as a community need to be proactive. Or we will all suffer.
And a underweight female will totally lay eggs if you bred her. But it’s definitely not in her best interest so why in the world do people still breed them? We need to be calling these people out.
I’ve operated both ways but I’m just being intellectually honest the way I used to operate was to benefit me and I didn’t take the snakes health into consideration and that was wrong period I don’t operate like that anymore.
But the female doesn’t even know what breeding is. How can she know she wants something that doesn’t exist to her?.. as i said, she likely feels something, like a itch that needs scratching, but she isn’t sat hoping Dave from tub 282 is coming round tonight. Instincts and knowing are two different things.
This is not correct. Partho doesn’t happen because conditions are optimal, but rather the opposite. Its a final resort in a attempt to pass their genetics on. This is something that is encoded into them for the sake of species survival, not something they choose to do. Plants can also do this also, its called rodelization and is down to stress.
According to warren booth (if I’ve been following it right) they should be half copies … Which is how we can confirm partho clutches. A Fire female is going to produce a BlkEL partho clutch. Where the Fire female will have both X and Y chromosomes, the clutch will be X X.
I can’t say I know the answer to this, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it was a choice. They could just not be getting the environmental or chemical cues that cause a lock. They could be having digestion problems or even a headache at the time
Hold up… This would require seperate cavities for indexing and storing different sperm.
Their sperm has evolved through thousands of successful generations to become long-life in the conditions within their body. This was not out of choice, but simply the longer lasting sperm survived enough for the snakes body to be in a fulfilling environment. The DNA fluctuations that kept that sperm alive Vs the ones that died days/weeks earlier is passed on to offspring. It’s just evolution.
It results in sub fertile females with significant health issues far from optimal indeed. This is another practice we shouldn’t be continuing. Known partho clutches should not be incubated.
I’m not really disagreeing with you but your argument, as presented, is weak. This discussion has become completely counterproductive.
It’s always for us, trying to claim waiting is for the benefit of the animal is a weak argument. It’s for us at 1500g and for us at 2500g; 2 years old, or 10 years old.
Activists don’t want people to have any domesticated animals. We will NEVER appease them. They will ALWAYS attack us. Giving an inch to them in any capacity doesn’t help us, it only makes them look credible.
What hurts the hobby is excessive gatekeeping.
People are seeing and reading standards online that are essentially considered common knowledge. If they came to this thread, they would see something (from you) that differs from that. I believe that if you lobbied the entire hobby/community to change that common standard, you would lose, especially based on your current arguments. If you could make a solid case to prove health benefits, or better quality production, longevity of females, more robust hatchlings, any number of things that would appeal to the masses as actual benefits you would have a chance to change minds on scale. You don’t have that right now. You don’t even have a specific answer as to when, you offer no clear parameters. “When she’s done growing” is a vague non-answer. One could easily argue that a female of any species isn’t truly done growing until AFTER she reproduces.
I 100% agree that there should be written standards, a code of ethics that is ball python specific, provided by a species club supported by members. This doesn’t even exist.
Start a club Shaun, I’ll join.
My whole point is snakes are living creatures so error on the side of there health and that’s pretty much a coMmon sense approach. Don’t breed before finished growing, don’t breed defects, don’t keep females obese and breeding every year. People are treating them like a collection designed to make money off. And there argument is incredibly weak believe because I’ve done this twenty years so I know. Zero anything to back it up not even common sense.
I will say that your points are valid and that I agree with the fact that we as a hobby do things that sometimes violate hidden moral values. We shouldn’t breed things with kinks. I am not saying don’t breed morphs, just be aware if there any “issues” with genetic line. Again, spider and the wobble complex I think are completely fine to breed as long as examples of extreme wobbles are humanely euthanize.
I truly believe that we should not just think of “our” collection and the “other” collections. Often when we separate ourselves in to any condition where there is no accountability (our stuff) we will lose the sense of morality that we would have if others were able to criticize and remember said actions.
… but we figure it can’t hurt and most likely will result in overall bigger females in the end.