This is my first year breeding so im not very good at identifying signs of eggs or ovulation but I do have a question. My female ball python came out of ovulation have her prelay shed it seemed like and it all seemed perfect but then she started to lose all of her fat it seemed like. A lot of people seemed to have run into this problem and still get eggs is this true that I could still possibly get good eggs or just slugs or even no eggs?
They don’t always stay “fat” during the process. There is a lot of energy used during the making of eggs which is why breeders tend to have pretty thick girls to start.
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Okay thank you also I had another question. It’s been around 27 days since what I thought was a pre lay. Last night she was moving around the tub could this possibly be a sigh of her looking for a place to lay?
It’s possible… they tend to move more to position the eggs for laying in my experience
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Are you sure she ovulated? It is actually easy to miss, and if not she could have decided not to lay even if she was locked by a male multiple times. If she is roaming around that is a good sign like @steelserpents said. If nothing soon try offering food, if she is close to definitely laying she probably won’t be interested at all. If she takes it keep feeding her, maybe she hasn’t ovulated quite yet. Or worst case, she just wasn’t ready to go this year.
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Agreed, ovulation its just a 24 hour change isn’t it? easy to miss, I did.
For a first time ball python breeder with my first eggs from may females that was hard for me to see and be sure of. especial because I work and don’t watch them every hour.
But it was obvious to see spinal ridge and the squashing and continual widerning, got more obvious over time and they laid and eggs came soon after.
Hard to describe, but try some of this guys videos (some really show it well , not necessarily this one look at them all, some of his images show it without a doubt, but I am tired and cant find the best ones)
Then I saw the swelling moving down untill they popped out.
Will she still not be interested even if I feed her live? Because won’t she have a reaction either way if there is a live animal in the tub with her?
If she is post ov she’ll refuse food but ball pythons refuse food for all sorts of reasons so that’s not necessarily a foolproof method. Can you post some pictures of her?
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In my understanding non feeding can represent earlier stages too
edit: posted to quick @ballornothing made my point first.
That would help my spinal point and others
Just a new breeders with eggs perspective, some signes take time to learn and recognise.
But I couldn’t miss the changes in spinal produsion and flattening and widening, with All my snakes t I could easily see that and they laid very soon after.
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Here is a picture of her a week ago
She has some stuck shed that’s been hard to remove due to my broken arm and she has also moved all the substrate up
She doesn’t look too thin to be gravid still, keep your fingers and toes crossed!
How pronounced is the ridge of her spine? As in most of the year they’re “round” but when gravid the spine will have a sharp ridge to it. The ridge will get more pronounced the closer they are to laying.
It does seem like a regular spine compared to my other bps and is not to pronounced but it is a little bigger than normal but nothing that’s signals gravid
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