Goodness, these old videos make me cringe a bit but the information is still good. Hope you found it useful. I have more recent ones in which I'm better but the snakes are still the same!
Wow....I'm very flattered. I do edit my videos, but not to hide snake things. It's more usually because I mess up what I'm saying and I have to edit out me sounding like an idiot.
Hi Chris. Obviously all animals have their own strategy for attracting a mate, from visual display and bright colours, courtship display to scent and pheromones. The later is particularly important to snakes. Snakes may have to attract a mate from a long distance away, but fortunately their sense of smell (taste) is extremely sensitive.
One thing about breeding ball pythons is they won't be rushed! Anticipation keeps us going. I have quite a few snakes and whatever isn't ready, I have plenty to keep me going, so in some ways it's easier for me to say be patient, but I'm always excited to see what this years hatchlings will produce in two to three years time. That feeling never goes away and it never gets old. I love seeing the same passion in others.
Thanks Rob. Very helpful 👍. Looking forward to the next in the series. I like the way your draw on your collection and experience to help us out. We in our second season and experimenting with different methods. The lady two locks took 4 days for is to see a visual. Lady year I would have taken them out after 3 days and perhaps missed a positive confirmation. It's made me realise that we need to be flexible and let the snakes do things at their pace.
100% agree. There are no rules, only guidelines and we are not the ones in charge. The snakes are. The axanthic male I used in my example did not perform in the first round of pairings. This didn't concern me because the first pairings are always just a kick start to the season. This time around I noticed more positive signs, but no visual lock so I left them together a bit longer and sure enough, we got a lock. Every new season teaches us something new and we are constantly refining and tweaking our process as well as gaining experience and confidence. But the snakes are in charge, no matter how much we pretend.
Hello Rob nice video..I knew about the 1500gr weight to breed..but I like your Philosophy on body condition on the female's if I hadn't seen this video I might have jumped on the 1500gr bandwagon but now I know better..and bred to early ..thanks
No rules here Charley, only guidelines. The snakes are in charge. Someone else has pointed this out too, so I will share with you some examples of females bred last year and the outcome, so we can see using real snakes how females look after they lay and the sort of weight gains/losses you can expect when you breed.
Happy to share my experiences, but these are not rules. Take the bits you like and try out a few things for yourself. Discard the bits that don't work for you or you don't like.
Good question. We don't quite know is the answer. It came from a clutch of just straight pieds and there were 2 of them, both males, very different to their siblings. The original stock came from JKR around 12 years ago so a suspect is gene x, but it hasn't shown up in any of the collection until now. We will be breeding these back into our pied projects this year in order to see what we have.
Thanks for all your knowledge. We just got us a female a couple months ago and male that we just paid off will be on the way soon. Though we have a few years to grow them up before trying to pair them. Can you do a video on how to calculate the outcome of a clutch when you have something that is poss for a gene.. or what do you do with that information when trying to calutate an outcome exactly?
Hi Samantha. I'm sure I have shown it in some of my egg pulling videos last year, but it will be my pleasure to make a video covering this specific aspect. I do have a "procedure" and I'm happy to share that. Is it urgent/imminent or can it wait until my first clutch this season?
Sure you can Tina. I'll do my best to answer although it's always difficult to interpret just from photographs without knowing your snake. You can reach me on Facebook Messenger (Rob Barraclough - facebook.com/robert.barraclough.16/) or DM me on Instagram (Rob.Barraclough - instagram.com/rob.barraclough/)
Hi mate. Living in the tropics, we have no seasons so I like to aim to start pairing in around October when the rainy season starts. In preparation for this I will have checked the physical condition of the females I want to breed and will have commenced feeding heavily (weekly) a couple of months ahead. I start pairing based on the start of the rainy season but only those females that have started to show signs they want to breed. Very often these initial pairings will kick start not just the females you paired, but also the pheromones' given off will get the whole room into gear. Often introducing a male will get the female really developing follicles and her feeding response goes through the roof. Some females lag a bit behind and for those I will wait for an extra month or so until they show me they want to breed before I do the initial pairings. Usually females that want to breed will have started cool seeking and eating ravenously by December so I'll be pairing everything that wants to go by then. I will continue pairings once a month until either the females ovulate or they reabsorb. Some late females will start to bowl wrap at this time as well and I'll start to pair those as well if they are pairings I want for my projects. My season is year round if I allow it, but logistically it's a bit easier to try and get it synchronized as best I can. For those living in temperate climates with distinct seasons, your snakes will respond to that even though they are in a temperature controlled environment, so time your increased feedings a few months ahead of the barometer dropping and pair up when you get the first low pressures of the season. A lot of what happens after that is based on how your snakes respond and individual females will vary. This is when a keen eye and a bit of experience really pays off so you don't waste effort on females that won't go or waste your males pairing up too soon or to none receptive females. Hope this helps mate. I like to prep my females and set a date to start pairing for my own convenience, but our snakes will always be on their own timetables and we need to be flexible to cater for them as individuals. My seasons have been getting longer and overlapping. I have females I just started pairing. I have females who laid early this year and I have females who laid late in the year. I have eggs in the incubator pretty much year round now.
Hi mate. They are all locally made by local handymen or small reptile businesses. We don't use heat mats out here in the tropics, so the racks are pretty simple to make. I have a couple of "professional" racks from a Chinese manufacturer imported at reasonable costs which are great quality.
Wow a 1 year old female at 1700gms. That's very unusual. What are you feeding her? There are two factors to consider. Sexual maturity comes with age and physical development. Unlikely at just a year old she will have mature overies and be building follicles. The other is size. Enough reserves to get them through the breeding process without killing them. Your female has that, but is she in good condition or perhaps fat? I have paired females at 18 months and they have gone on to lay at around 2 years old, but this is less than half of my first time females. Most breed a year later at 2 years plus and go on to lay in their 3rd year and I tend to hold off until at least 2 years of age before I start pairing. I like my first time females to be at least 2000gms at their peak weight during the build before they stop eating and even then they will loose as much as 50% of their body weight and be very skinny when they have laid. I would say that 1700gms is unusually large, but at only 1 year old, you might find she either will not lock with the male or if she does, you'll be pairing for a year before she lays. I would be looking to start pairing her at 18 months, if she is showing signs of a build, cool seeking, bowl wrapping etc. Hope this helps. These are just guidelines and every individual snake is different.
Size of ASF's vary from rat breeder to rat breeder, but I feed my females a single 80-120gm ASF or rat every 10 to 14 days for most of the year. Your feeding doesn't sound particularly excessive, but the reason I feed less often is that I feel a snake constantly digesting food is never going to be in optimal health or using any of the physiological adaptions that allow it to go long periods without eating. They get sluggish and lazy if they are fed too much, which can impact your breeding season. I also find the snakes respond better to an increased amount of food at the start of the breeding season to stimulate them to grow follicles. I will increase the feeding to once a week or every 5 days when I'm getting ready to start pairing and it's hard to simulate this increase in food abundance if they are already fed every week. Cyclic feeding is, in my opinion, the best way to stimulate the highest number of paired females to go on and lay eggs. Females that are well fed in the run up to breeding will lock willingly with males but often just don't build and go on to lay eggs, almost like they missed the seasonal cues or their hormones are suppressed. Your female has certainly reached an impressive size in record time. I think you will still have around 6 months or more before she is actually mature and producing follicles, but size and reserves for breeding will not be an issue for this female.
Excellent series, Rob - thank you!!! This will be very good reference for someone like me who’s just getting their feet wet. My first very important question is where the hell do you get newspaper from!? It’s so hard for me to find old newspaper anywhere 🤣 Seriously though, other than egg binding and significant weight loss like you mentioned, is there any other serious risk to consider if she does go after being paired at a smaller size and weight (say a 2-3 year old)? I also notice what looked like a bit of blood stain with the shed and some of my snakes leave a bit of blood too when they shed. Is it normal?
Star newspaper distributed free. Condos, schools etc often have a huge pile of surplus newspapers they would otherwise throw out. Or just ask your mates to pick up 3 or 4 copies every day from work. Young females - Ultimately the female herself will decide, but your margins are always much finer if anything doesn't go like clockwork or on schedule. I'm not sure what the mortality rate would be for wild females while breeding, but I wouldn't forgive myself if I thought I had caused it. Egg bound, prolapsed oviduct, internal ruptures and bleeding, all sorts of horror stories out there with both young and mature but obese snakes. I think we have to trust our animals on this one. They are not machines and breeding them is not a factory production line. We have to let them do their own thing and work within their limits. Yes, a small amount of discharge from the cloaca during shed is common. This is a female. Males will often leave pink trails from the hemipenes after they have shed or even after mating. I guess the muscular contractions of shedding causes the discharge. If you use substrate you probably never noticed it, but on white paper it shows up.
I have another question. Two of my breeder females are never miss a meal all year long females. All my breeder girls have been paired since September and have 3 locks on them. The two super eater girls ONLY eat live and have lately been immediately grabbing the live rat like always, wrapping and killing them, but have just been leaving them and not eating. This will be my first breeding season and both females never ever miss a meal and have never just killed and not eaten the rats before. One girl has done it twice in a row now, the other girl has done it three times now. I offered a 2nd rat each time and one female wanted nothing to do with it and the other all three times killed and ate the second rat. Is this normal during the breeding process?
Very difficult to interpret isolated behaviours, but they are all part of a pattern that is the breeding cycle for a female. I will cover this in part 2 of my breeder series released tonight, so please do watch that. When you first start to pair, your females will start growing follicles. They eat ravenously to gain the reserves they will need later on. They will cool seek and bowl wrap. This phase might take 2 months, it might take 6 months. When the follicles reach about 25mm, the digestive system gets too restricted for them to eat any more and they will go off food. Some do it suddenly, some tail off slowly. They will still show interest, but will not eat. Instinct makes them kill even if they don't eat. Once they stop eating, it's usually about another month or 6 weeks to grow the follicles from 25mm to 45mm at which point they will ovulate. They are using their body reserves to do this. They do not eat again until after they lay eggs and finish incubation if you maternally incubate. So, if this is a progression from the build phase, your females are cool seeking, they have been paired and they are getting chunky looking, then yes, this would be a normal progression in the breeding cycle. Keep pairing the females with the males on schedule once they go off food, but after ovulation the male is no longer required.
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls absolutely. I’m subscribed to your channel and watch all you videos. You do a wonderful job explaining and the best part is show actual examples with your animals which helps guys like me that are very hands on and visual with everything I do. I appreciate channels like yours which make my hobby much more interesting and stress free. Thanks!
I have a question Rob. If you miss an ovulation by either just simply not noticing because it’s your first season or you haven’t checked on them in 2-3 days and they ovulated during that time or for any reason you may miss an ovulation. If you keep paring because you missed the ovulation, will the male and female still lock or will the female not allow the copulation anymore? Just curious and never hear anything after ovulation except the prelay shed and eggs.
Some females will simply show no interest in males at all after ovulation, but I have also done this accidentally in my first season and seen a lock just days before the female laid eggs. So yes, they will still lock. and no, it doesn't stop the female laying. There are a number of other indications your female has ovulated, even if you miss the actual ovulation. She will hug the hot spot, rather than cool. She will start nesting, shoving all the substrate away or getting under the paper. She will have scale separation in the belly and she will have quite a prominent spinal ridge as well, from the eggs pushing up on her spine from inside. And she will go through her prelay shed. These are all things that are easier to notice the more often you see it.
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls thanks for the replies. I have another question or circumstance to run by you. One of my females who I believe is the furthest along. She was not breed last year or before to my knowledge. She is a 2015 and 3050g and has been off food for 4 weeks now and is always in the water dish or wrapped around it. She has 4 locks on her currently. She had a shed right on time, then she’d again 2 weeks later. I have never had a snake shed again so quickly. Did I miss an ovulation and was the 2nd shed a pre-lay shed? She is bowl wrapping and soaking like I said which I thought stopped after ovulation
Hi mate. Usually its about 14 days from ovulation to pre-lay shed and then around 30 days after that to lay eggs. I don't think she would shed, ovulate and shed again in a two week period, so she may have already ovulated. A double shed after ovulation is not unusual, so don't worry. Also depending upon temperatures and the individual female, they don't always immediately go to the hot spot and begin nesting. If you missed ovulation, she will have fairly noticeable scale separation along the sides and belly and you will also notice a prominent spinal ridge as the eggs push up on the spine from inside. I think I said this in my first reply, so at least I'm consistent. The spinal ridge is usually only seen post ovulation. You sound as if you think she's getting ready to lay from all the signs, but since you might have missed an ovulation, you're not sure. All you can do now is to prepare for eggs and trust your female knows what she's doing! You don't need to do anything special, just monitor her. She is a big girl with plenty of reserves, so if this was not a pre lay shed, she may still go on to lay a clutch in a few more weeks. I have had females be off food for 90 days before laying, so she may not be quite there yet either. If she has not laid in the next 30 days and she is still bowl soaking or wrapping, you can go ahead and pair with the male again and watch for ovulation in the weeks to follow. Almost there! The hard part is done. Good luck.
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls Thanks Rob, I appreciate the time you take from your day to respond in detail which is exactly what us first timers need. The double shed is what has thrown me off. All my years of keeping ball pythons I have never had an animal double shed like that and stacked it up to the breeding which this is my first go and don’t have the experience yet. She is a big girl, she does have scale separation almost everywhere from the last 3rd down, but when she is stretched out or in a loose coil her spine ridge is concave instead of pushed up. When she is coiled tight she definitely has a prominent ridge down the spine. She is now 4 days straight in the water dish.
Rob, I have a male pastave enchi that I intend pairing with a mature proven lesser pastel female. The female is 2.4Kg and has now switched off food, however the male pastave enchi is only 16 months old, and 800g, and is still taking 50g multis each week with gutso... Would it be too soon to pair them, or should I wait until next March time when he should possibly tip the scales over the 1kg mark...?
Hi Malcolm. Your female is really the driver here. If she is a mature female and she has been building and has now gone off food, she needs to be paired up soon if you wish to get a clutch. If you do not pair her, she may just reabsorb her follicles and you'll be back to square one. So green light from her side. Your male is easily old enough to breed even if a little on the small side. He is still eating though. I don't think you can do any harm by sticking him in with the female and seeing what happens. Males are much less of a worry since their roll is limited to just the actual pairing. The worst thing would be they don't lock and he stops eating. I'm willing to bet he locks. You can always get him eating again if he stops, but again, I bet he doesn't. Good luck! Go for it.
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls Well he's now in with her... There are a couple of low pressure systems crossing the UK this weekend, so maybe that will also bring them into the mood :)
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls Well I put him in with her, within five minutes noticed what looked like a grain of rice on his vent, which he wiped off on the cork hide.... guess he's ready and releasing sperm plugs !
Premature whatever! It sure sounds like he's ready. I know this is hard, but try not to check every few minutes. Give them some space. Check twice a day. Watch out for what your female does - to tell you she is receptive. Did she pee and scent the tub? The male will attempt to mate with her and will assume a "dominant" position as I showed in my first video if she is receptive and he is "keen". Let the "relationship" develop. You may not see a visual lock, but the chances are you will, as they often lock for hours at a time. The next steps are to separate them when they are done. Refresh the tubs and attempt to feed the male on normal feeding day. If he eats, no worries. If he doesn't, don't stress but take note of his body condition. The female is just recently off food you mentioned, so she will be somewhere around 4-6 weeks from ovulation. This is approximate as they are all different. During this period, I always try to squeeze in a few extra locks without stressing the female too much. Say every 2 weeks until ovulation. Note if they lock or not for your records. The male should not be a problem if he is only working one female. He can go the distance. This is the best time during the breeding season. She isn't eating, so she also isn't pooing. Tubs stay cleaner for longer. You just need to continue to pair at regular intervals until she ovulates, at which point you can stop pairing. My next video will cover the female breeding cycle and give a rough timetable and easily recognised milestones for the whole process. I will also cover the males and when I try to pair and how I manage multiple pairings with a single male. I'll try to get this out sooner rather than later so we have all the info we need to progress through the season and get to the next phase in the process. I can tell you are excited!
nice video mate! So this one is the first one a series of a dozen other videos still to come. Cool!! How many breeding seasons have you done so far Rob? You know my answer: finishing my first! The last clutch (Killer Blasts at max) should pip next weekend.
I normally pair my first time females when they reach over 1500gms and are between 2 and 3 years old. That's when I would look at pairing, IF i think they're ready. I like my females to reach 2000gms plus during their build so that they do not drop under 1000gms after they lay. Allow me to explain or qualify these weights and ages. A younger, smaller female in my experience will go off food sooner and for longer before laying than a larger female. The restriction on her digestive system as she grows follicles is more pronounced in a female that has a smaller girth. So she inevitably looses a greater percentage of her body weight to produce what is usually a smaller clutch. She will loose 50% of her body weight or even more from the time she reaches peak weight during her build compared to her weight just after laying. Egg size is roughly the same, just less of them. She will also end her breeding cycle at a sometimes frighteningly low weight. I consider anything under 1000gms for a female after she has laid is dangerously thin and the snake will need extra care during recovery if it is to survive, never mind go on to lay eggs the following season. Some females bounce back quicker, but some take all year to get back to where they started and this can hamper both their subsequent growth rate and their productiveness in future years. Young snakes can get to some impressive sizes quite quickly in captivity, however, snakes can and do get fat if they are fed too much. Its not so visible in snakes because the fat is stored in internal fat glands, not under the skin. Just as in any other animal, being “fat” can cause complications during the reproductive process. Excessive sized fat glands can constrict the oviduct for instance, causing issues during ovulation, and especially when laying. If the oviduct is constricted by fat, a snake is much more likely to slug out, have trouble passing eggs and can even get egg bound or prolapse the oviduct. These issues can be fatal. Feeding regimes in captive snakes are almost always massively overfeeding. We can give it the name “power feeding” if we wish, but again we need to consider snake physiology to get an insight into what we are doing when we overfeed our snakes. Snakes are opportunistic feeders designed to eat whenever food is available, so we can usually get our captive snakes to eat, even if they don’t really need to. When a snake takes in food, unlike a mammal which gets hungry again when its stomach is empty and it needs to feed again to stay active, a snake has an internal fuel tank. It stores nutrients in its liver which can expand to 2 or 3 or more times its normal size, along with the heart, kidneys and pancreas. This article is specifically on Burmese Pythons but notes that all Python species have the same physiological adaptions. They are being extensively studied due to their status as an invasive species in the everglades. Reticulated Pythons and Ball Pythons show the same physiological adaptions. The Journal of Experimental Biology 211, 3767-3774 Published by The Company of Biologists 2008 Commentary Digestive physiology of the Burmese python: broad regulation of integrated performance “An integrated phenomenon, digestion is also characterized by increases in the mass, and presumably the function, of the heart, pancreas, liver and kidneys. Digestion for the Burmese python is a relatively expensive endeavour, evident by the as much as a 44-fold increase in metabolic rate and equivalent in cost to as much as 37% of the mealʼs energy.” www.nature.com/articles/laban.1027.pdf I often hear how a 16 month old snake that weighs 1800 gms is “ready to breed” but she may not be anywhere near as large as we think she is. We like to say, ok subtract 100gms for the rat she just ate this week, so she is 1700gms empty. Empty??? Hell no, not empty. Not even close. She still has a full fuel tank, an enlarged liver, heart, kidneys and pancreas that are several times the normal size from all the food we have been giving her. She looks massive and her body condition is great, but she’s just been storing all that food in an enlarged liver and fat glands, not true body weight. And all these enlarged organs that make the snake look great have nothing to do with reproduction. Her reproductive organs may still be immature, even though her body is massive. Her true empty weight might be 1800 gms less 100 gms for the rat she just ate and less another say…. 600 gms for the massively enlarged liver and heart etc. She actually weights 1100gms empty and is a much smaller snake than we think she is. She could probably go for a year without eating with no ill effects at all from the stored nutrients in her liver and fat glands. And at the end of that year she’ll be 30 months old, we’ll get a true “empty weight” and maybe she will actually be ready to breed. For this reason alone, don’t get expectations too high when trying young first time females. She isn’t as big or mature as we think if we are just basing it on size/weight. Her enlarged liver and other organs may be contributing 30% or more of her bodyweight and her true weight might be considerably smaller. My success rate on first time females under 2 years old but “up to weight” is less than 50%. More than half of those paired simply don't go on to produce a clutch of eggs, even if they were nice and thick and exhibiting build behaviour. Follicle development is not necessarily a guide, as prior to ovulation these animals can and do reabsorb their follicles and then start another build cycle over the next 6 months or so. This is very common in first time females and I believe partly a response to being overfed and not having sufficient internal space for developing follicles. For first time females in their 3rd year, my success figure goes up considerably to something closer to 75%. Much more internal space in a bigger more mature female. Males I have no issue with breeding in their first year at less than 1000gms. Numbers will differ depending on how we keep our snakes and how much we feed them. No rules here, no right and wrong, but it is just another illustration of how this can vary massively between breeders and how snakes can look mature when they are not. One of the factors of snake physiology that potentially could put our snakes at risk during breeding is their response to stress and in particular the function of cortisol (stress hormone). In higher animals (mammals in particular), during adverse conditions cortisol shuts down the reproductive system preventing breeding. It also shuts down lactation, sacrificing any nursing young, in order to allow the adult to survive and breed another day. You'll notice this if you breed rats and get it wrong. Applying this same rule to snakes and assuming they won’t breed if they are not ready is incorrect. Reptiles in general, and snakes in particular, respond very differently to cortisol. www.researchgate.net/publication/262831858_Stress_and_Reproduction_in_Reptiles www.seaturtle.org/PDF/MorenoIT_2003_HormonesBehav.pdf “An increasing number of studies report positive associations between reproduction and corticosterone that contradict the generalization that stress inhibits reproduction. Moderately elevated levels of stress hormones appear to facilitate reproduction by mobilizing energy stores.” Snake hatchlings are completely independent, don’t suckle and have a chance of survival in lean times even if the parents die. In snakes, stress actually encourages breeding and they will sacrifice themselves in order to reproduce. We have all heard of male snakes being bred to death, not always a mistake made by inexperienced keepers alone and its because of the snakes response to cortisol that makes this possible. Female snakes too can respond to stress by producing a clutch of eggs when they do not have sufficient body reserves to guarantee their own survival. So it is a physiological adaption of our snakes that makes it perfectly possible to breed them when they have no hope of surviving the breeding process themselves. I think we can agree this would not be a desirable outcome. Probably a bit more than you asked for, but I hope it helps trying to decide when to breed a first time female.
The maths regarding the weight loss for a young bp is very off, if you start at 1500 she will build on top of that, generally a good few hundred grams at least before even getting newr laying, a small clutch from. A young female is only going to bring her back to her normal weight. She's also in her peak condition physically as she is young, I've heard of a lot more retained clutches in older fatter females. Also... You think they wait till they're 2000 grams in the wild? Lol
This is good feedback. I realize my statement might be misleading and if I put out numbers they should be accurate. My bad. 800gm to 1000gm weight loss would be from the peak weight they attain during build to the weight they are after laying. We'll touch on this again in part 2 so thank you for pointing this out. For now, let me give you some real numbers from two of my smaller females from last year. I'm interested to compare notes and what results others get. Pastel Vanilla Mojave Female, 3 years old. 1880gms at the start of pairing. Peak weight during build, 2450gms. Weight after laying an 8 egg clutch, 1386gms. So she gained about 600gms during build, lost about 1050gms by the time she finished laying and ended up with a net loss for the season of 500gms. A bodyweight swing of 45%. She has regained her condition pretty quickly and is ready for pairing again. Pastel Enchi Clown Female, 3 years old. 1485 grams at the start of pairing. Peak weight during build, 1950gms. Weight after laying a seven egg clutch 1030gms. She gained less than 500gms during build, lost 900gms by the time she finished laying and had a net weight loss of 400gms for the season. Note that while she did not build as well as she should have, she still lost the same 800-1000gms I mentioned when she laid. A bodyweight swing of 62%. Post lay she was painfully small and whilst I didn't get any slugs, the eggs all had weak veins and I already lost 2 during incubation. Definitely a mistake on my part. She has only regained 200gms of this since laying. Whilst it will not kill her, I doubt she will be ready to breed again this year and the clutch might have been wasted anyway. This isn't a good outcome and totally my fault. Hardly any of my females finish laying their eggs back at the weight where they started. They are invariably lighter in weight, sometimes by quite a bit. The larger females have much more "margins" in body reserves and their % weight swing is less. They cope much better and bounce back much quicker. I'm always reluctant to make direct comparisons with Ball Pythons in the wild. We pump our females up to 1500gms in 2 years by feeding them far more food than a wild snake would ever see. They are far from their physical peak at this age. They do not reach close to fully grown until 3 or 4 years old even in captivity. Research shows that in the wild it takes them much longer to reach the same sizes. A female in the wild may not reach sexual maturity and breed for the first time until she is 4 years old or even longer. This isn't really comparable with what we do in captivity. Great subject for the next video. We'll take a look at the Clown Female and I will share with you the "mistake" I made trying to breed her.
Hi mate. Yep, female Pastel Ball Python, 1 year old is the giveaway for Malaysian subscribers. Actually, by the time I include shipping costs for the International T Shirt giveaway, there isn't much difference in the value. Sorry about that.....the logistics of living on the other side of the planet!
before watching this i watched a 2 part video, but the title was intriguing and you said it with the exact cadence i imagined.
Goodness, these old videos make me cringe a bit but the information is still good. Hope you found it useful. I have more recent ones in which I'm better but the snakes are still the same!
@Robert Barraclough (Royal Balls) ill definitely check them out as my snakes get older so the information is fresh in my head. have a great day man.
I like this new style of video 👊
Thanks Richard. Lets see if it works.
@Robert Barraclough the most honest breeder ive seen and your content is great.....good stuff nice eye candy😊
Wow....I'm very flattered. I do edit my videos, but not to hide snake things. It's more usually because I mess up what I'm saying and I have to edit out me sounding like an idiot.
Excellent video! Gives us new breeders confidence.
That's a great compliment!
Great vid Rob :)
Thank you.
Haha come get some. Love it!
Hi Chris. Obviously all animals have their own strategy for attracting a mate, from visual display and bright colours, courtship display to scent and pheromones. The later is particularly important to snakes. Snakes may have to attract a mate from a long distance away, but fortunately their sense of smell (taste) is extremely sensitive.
Absolutely
Great video
Thanks Shane.
Awesome, thank you so much!!
Thanks.
Fantastic, thank you.
Hope it was useful. The season has just kicked off. Early days yet. Plenty more to see as we go through the season.
Awesome Rob! Looking forward to this series!!
Welcome mate. Hope you enjoy the rest of the series and please jump in any time and comment.
great video. Thank you!!
Thanks for the support.
Very informative,,, your snakes are amazing and I love the content continue to be great
Yes I do want to breed I just have a normal male right now but yes very interested in becoming a breeder
There are no minimum requirements, other than a male and a female. I hope you find these videos interesting and you gain confidence to have a go.
Great video my friend. I'm goin to enjoy following along this season with you. Hopefully next year I will get to try my hand at breeding.
Thanks Chad. I bet you can't wait! Watching snake videos might not help with patience.
Yeah it doesn't. LOL. But the information i can get is priceless. We r up to 10 BPs now and picking up 2 more girls by the end of November
I’m there too but I think I’ll have two to three years to wait. Patience is a virtue 😊
One thing about breeding ball pythons is they won't be rushed! Anticipation keeps us going. I have quite a few snakes and whatever isn't ready, I have plenty to keep me going, so in some ways it's easier for me to say be patient, but I'm always excited to see what this years hatchlings will produce in two to three years time. That feeling never goes away and it never gets old. I love seeing the same passion in others.
Thanks again for sharing all your experience.
My pleasure. I hope there is something useful in these videos that helps people out.
Going into my first season.... very helpful! Thanks so much
Awesome. Good luck with your plans. Please do follow along and we can compare notes. Always something new to learn.
I’m very much looking forward to this series. Thank you for putting this information out there! Excited to follow you in your breeding season.
We'll try to keep it real, dirty tubs and all. Hope you can follow along and you find it useful.
Thanks Rob. Very helpful 👍. Looking forward to the next in the series. I like the way your draw on your collection and experience to help us out. We in our second season and experimenting with different methods. The lady two locks took 4 days for is to see a visual. Lady year I would have taken them out after 3 days and perhaps missed a positive confirmation. It's made me realise that we need to be flexible and let the snakes do things at their pace.
100% agree. There are no rules, only guidelines and we are not the ones in charge. The snakes are. The axanthic male I used in my example did not perform in the first round of pairings. This didn't concern me because the first pairings are always just a kick start to the season. This time around I noticed more positive signs, but no visual lock so I left them together a bit longer and sure enough, we got a lock.
Every new season teaches us something new and we are constantly refining and tweaking our process as well as gaining experience and confidence. But the snakes are in charge, no matter how much we pretend.
Fantastic video! So much information and great advice! Thank you. My first season is so exciting. Look forward to the next one 👍
Thank you. We'll do another one soon.
Hello Rob nice video..I knew about the 1500gr weight to breed..but I like your Philosophy on body condition on the female's if I hadn't seen this video I might have jumped on the 1500gr bandwagon but now I know better..and bred to early ..thanks
No rules here Charley, only guidelines. The snakes are in charge. Someone else has pointed this out too, so I will share with you some examples of females bred last year and the outcome, so we can see using real snakes how females look after they lay and the sort of weight gains/losses you can expect when you breed.
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls that would be very much appreciated Rob
Great video. Thank you for such a clear and simple walk through of the beginning of your season.
Thanks. Hope you can watch the rest of my season as it progresses.
I am learning so much from you, great advice, beautiful snakes, thank you do much.😊
Happy to share my experiences, but these are not rules. Take the bits you like and try out a few things for yourself. Discard the bits that don't work for you or you don't like.
What is thr morph of the pied snake in 21:00
Good question. We don't quite know is the answer. It came from a clutch of just straight pieds and there were 2 of them, both males, very different to their siblings. The original stock came from JKR around 12 years ago so a suspect is gene x, but it hasn't shown up in any of the collection until now. We will be breeding these back into our pied projects this year in order to see what we have.
Thanks for all your knowledge. We just got us a female a couple months ago and male that we just paid off will be on the way soon. Though we have a few years to grow them up before trying to pair them. Can you do a video on how to calculate the outcome of a clutch when you have something that is poss for a gene.. or what do you do with that information when trying to calutate an outcome exactly?
I sure can! I have done quite a few genetics videos in my archives but maybe something very easy to get started when breeding.
Yes I've watched them and liked them all. 🙂 Thank you!
Do you have a video of how you soak your females after they lay their eggs? If not can you make a video, please?
Hi Samantha. I'm sure I have shown it in some of my egg pulling videos last year, but it will be my pleasure to make a video covering this specific aspect. I do have a "procedure" and I'm happy to share that. Is it urgent/imminent or can it wait until my first clutch this season?
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls That would be awesome! Thanks. You should definitely do it with your first clutch this year.
Will include it!
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls That's great! Thank you so much!
Hi, I have some questions about breeding, is it possible to send you some pictures of my female?
Sure you can Tina. I'll do my best to answer although it's always difficult to interpret just from photographs without knowing your snake. You can reach me on Facebook Messenger (Rob Barraclough - facebook.com/robert.barraclough.16/) or DM me on Instagram (Rob.Barraclough - instagram.com/rob.barraclough/)
Exactly when do you pair you ball pythons at what stage when she showing signs or time?
Hi mate. Living in the tropics, we have no seasons so I like to aim to start pairing in around October when the rainy season starts. In preparation for this I will have checked the physical condition of the females I want to breed and will have commenced feeding heavily (weekly) a couple of months ahead.
I start pairing based on the start of the rainy season but only those females that have started to show signs they want to breed. Very often these initial pairings will kick start not just the females you paired, but also the pheromones' given off will get the whole room into gear. Often introducing a male will get the female really developing follicles and her feeding response goes through the roof.
Some females lag a bit behind and for those I will wait for an extra month or so until they show me they want to breed before I do the initial pairings. Usually females that want to breed will have started cool seeking and eating ravenously by December so I'll be pairing everything that wants to go by then.
I will continue pairings once a month until either the females ovulate or they reabsorb. Some late females will start to bowl wrap at this time as well and I'll start to pair those as well if they are pairings I want for my projects. My season is year round if I allow it, but logistically it's a bit easier to try and get it synchronized as best I can.
For those living in temperate climates with distinct seasons, your snakes will respond to that even though they are in a temperature controlled environment, so time your increased feedings a few months ahead of the barometer dropping and pair up when you get the first low pressures of the season.
A lot of what happens after that is based on how your snakes respond and individual females will vary. This is when a keen eye and a bit of experience really pays off so you don't waste effort on females that won't go or waste your males pairing up too soon or to none receptive females.
Hope this helps mate. I like to prep my females and set a date to start pairing for my own convenience, but our snakes will always be on their own timetables and we need to be flexible to cater for them as individuals. My seasons have been getting longer and overlapping. I have females I just started pairing. I have females who laid early this year and I have females who laid late in the year. I have eggs in the incubator pretty much year round now.
What is the brand of snake racks you use
Hi mate. They are all locally made by local handymen or small reptile businesses. We don't use heat mats out here in the tropics, so the racks are pretty simple to make. I have a couple of "professional" racks from a Chinese manufacturer imported at reasonable costs which are great quality.
Excellent video can you tell me at what age is good for a female to start breeding I’ve been told 3 years
Wow a 1 year old female at 1700gms. That's very unusual. What are you feeding her?
There are two factors to consider. Sexual maturity comes with age and physical development. Unlikely at just a year old she will have mature overies and be building follicles.
The other is size. Enough reserves to get them through the breeding process without killing them. Your female has that, but is she in good condition or perhaps fat? I have paired females at 18 months and they have gone on to lay at around 2 years old, but this is less than half of my first time females. Most breed a year later at 2 years plus and go on to lay in their 3rd year and I tend to hold off until at least 2 years of age before I start pairing.
I like my first time females to be at least 2000gms at their peak weight during the build before they stop eating and even then they will loose as much as 50% of their body weight and be very skinny when they have laid. I would say that 1700gms is unusually large, but at only 1 year old, you might find she either will not lock with the male or if she does, you'll be pairing for a year before she lays. I would be looking to start pairing her at 18 months, if she is showing signs of a build, cool seeking, bowl wrapping etc.
Hope this helps. These are just guidelines and every individual snake is different.
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls I feed one 2XL ASF rats about every 7 days
I’ll ways feed ASF rats from hatching
Size of ASF's vary from rat breeder to rat breeder, but I feed my females a single 80-120gm ASF or rat every 10 to 14 days for most of the year.
Your feeding doesn't sound particularly excessive, but the reason I feed less often is that I feel a snake constantly digesting food is never going to be in optimal health or using any of the physiological adaptions that allow it to go long periods without eating. They get sluggish and lazy if they are fed too much, which can impact your breeding season. I also find the snakes respond better to an increased amount of food at the start of the breeding season to stimulate them to grow follicles. I will increase the feeding to once a week or every 5 days when I'm getting ready to start pairing and it's hard to simulate this increase in food abundance if they are already fed every week. Cyclic feeding is, in my opinion, the best way to stimulate the highest number of paired females to go on and lay eggs. Females that are well fed in the run up to breeding will lock willingly with males but often just don't build and go on to lay eggs, almost like they missed the seasonal cues or their hormones are suppressed.
Your female has certainly reached an impressive size in record time. I think you will still have around 6 months or more before she is actually mature and producing follicles, but size and reserves for breeding will not be an issue for this female.
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls ASF rats 2xl are 60 to 69g for one week
Excellent series, Rob - thank you!!! This will be very good reference for someone like me who’s just getting their feet wet. My first very important question is where the hell do you get newspaper from!? It’s so hard for me to find old newspaper anywhere 🤣
Seriously though, other than egg binding and significant weight loss like you mentioned, is there any other serious risk to consider if she does go after being paired at a smaller size and weight (say a 2-3 year old)?
I also notice what looked like a bit of blood stain with the shed and some of my snakes leave a bit of blood too when they shed. Is it normal?
Star newspaper distributed free. Condos, schools etc often have a huge pile of surplus newspapers they would otherwise throw out. Or just ask your mates to pick up 3 or 4 copies every day from work.
Young females - Ultimately the female herself will decide, but your margins are always much finer if anything doesn't go like clockwork or on schedule. I'm not sure what the mortality rate would be for wild females while breeding, but I wouldn't forgive myself if I thought I had caused it. Egg bound, prolapsed oviduct, internal ruptures and bleeding, all sorts of horror stories out there with both young and mature but obese snakes.
I think we have to trust our animals on this one. They are not machines and breeding them is not a factory production line. We have to let them do their own thing and work within their limits.
Yes, a small amount of discharge from the cloaca during shed is common. This is a female. Males will often leave pink trails from the hemipenes after they have shed or even after mating. I guess the muscular contractions of shedding causes the discharge. If you use substrate you probably never noticed it, but on white paper it shows up.
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls so I guess it’s normal and yes, only noticeable if they’re on unprinted paper. Thanks Rob.
I have another question. Two of my breeder females are never miss a meal all year long females. All my breeder girls have been paired since September and have 3 locks on them. The two super eater girls ONLY eat live and have lately been immediately grabbing the live rat like always, wrapping and killing them, but have just been leaving them and not eating. This will be my first breeding season and both females never ever miss a meal and have never just killed and not eaten the rats before. One girl has done it twice in a row now, the other girl has done it three times now. I offered a 2nd rat each time and one female wanted nothing to do with it and the other all three times killed and ate the second rat. Is this normal during the breeding process?
Very difficult to interpret isolated behaviours, but they are all part of a pattern that is the breeding cycle for a female. I will cover this in part 2 of my breeder series released tonight, so please do watch that. When you first start to pair, your females will start growing follicles. They eat ravenously to gain the reserves they will need later on. They will cool seek and bowl wrap. This phase might take 2 months, it might take 6 months. When the follicles reach about 25mm, the digestive system gets too restricted for them to eat any more and they will go off food. Some do it suddenly, some tail off slowly. They will still show interest, but will not eat. Instinct makes them kill even if they don't eat.
Once they stop eating, it's usually about another month or 6 weeks to grow the follicles from 25mm to 45mm at which point they will ovulate. They are using their body reserves to do this. They do not eat again until after they lay eggs and finish incubation if you maternally incubate.
So, if this is a progression from the build phase, your females are cool seeking, they have been paired and they are getting chunky looking, then yes, this would be a normal progression in the breeding cycle. Keep pairing the females with the males on schedule once they go off food, but after ovulation the male is no longer required.
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls absolutely. I’m subscribed to your channel and watch all you videos. You do a wonderful job explaining and the best part is show actual examples with your animals which helps guys like me that are very hands on and visual with everything I do. I appreciate channels like yours which make my hobby much more interesting and stress free. Thanks!
I have a question Rob. If you miss an ovulation by either just simply not noticing because it’s your first season or you haven’t checked on them in 2-3 days and they ovulated during that time or for any reason you may miss an ovulation. If you keep paring because you missed the ovulation, will the male and female still lock or will the female not allow the copulation anymore? Just curious and never hear anything after ovulation except the prelay shed and eggs.
Some females will simply show no interest in males at all after ovulation, but I have also done this accidentally in my first season and seen a lock just days before the female laid eggs. So yes, they will still lock. and no, it doesn't stop the female laying.
There are a number of other indications your female has ovulated, even if you miss the actual ovulation. She will hug the hot spot, rather than cool. She will start nesting, shoving all the substrate away or getting under the paper. She will have scale separation in the belly and she will have quite a prominent spinal ridge as well, from the eggs pushing up on her spine from inside. And she will go through her prelay shed. These are all things that are easier to notice the more often you see it.
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls thanks for the replies. I have another question or circumstance to run by you. One of my females who I believe is the furthest along. She was not breed last year or before to my knowledge. She is a 2015 and 3050g and has been off food for 4 weeks now and is always in the water dish or wrapped around it. She has 4 locks on her currently. She had a shed right on time, then she’d again 2 weeks later. I have never had a snake shed again so quickly. Did I miss an ovulation and was the 2nd shed a pre-lay shed? She is bowl wrapping and soaking like I said which I thought stopped after ovulation
Hi mate. Usually its about 14 days from ovulation to pre-lay shed and then around 30 days after that to lay eggs. I don't think she would shed, ovulate and shed again in a two week period, so she may have already ovulated. A double shed after ovulation is not unusual, so don't worry. Also depending upon temperatures and the individual female, they don't always immediately go to the hot spot and begin nesting. If you missed ovulation, she will have fairly noticeable scale separation along the sides and belly and you will also notice a prominent spinal ridge as the eggs push up on the spine from inside. I think I said this in my first reply, so at least I'm consistent. The spinal ridge is usually only seen post ovulation.
You sound as if you think she's getting ready to lay from all the signs, but since you might have missed an ovulation, you're not sure. All you can do now is to prepare for eggs and trust your female knows what she's doing! You don't need to do anything special, just monitor her. She is a big girl with plenty of reserves, so if this was not a pre lay shed, she may still go on to lay a clutch in a few more weeks. I have had females be off food for 90 days before laying, so she may not be quite there yet either.
If she has not laid in the next 30 days and she is still bowl soaking or wrapping, you can go ahead and pair with the male again and watch for ovulation in the weeks to follow. Almost there! The hard part is done. Good luck.
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls Thanks Rob, I appreciate the time you take from your day to respond in detail which is exactly what us first timers need. The double shed is what has thrown me off. All my years of keeping ball pythons I have never had an animal double shed like that and stacked it up to the breeding which this is my first go and don’t have the experience yet. She is a big girl, she does have scale separation almost everywhere from the last 3rd down, but when she is stretched out or in a loose coil her spine ridge is concave instead of pushed up. When she is coiled tight she definitely has a prominent ridge down the spine. She is now 4 days straight in the water dish.
Rob, I have a male pastave enchi that I intend pairing with a mature proven lesser pastel female. The female is 2.4Kg and has now switched off food, however the male pastave enchi is only 16 months old, and 800g, and is still taking 50g multis each week with gutso... Would it be too soon to pair them, or should I wait until next March time when he should possibly tip the scales over the 1kg mark...?
Hi Malcolm. Your female is really the driver here. If she is a mature female and she has been building and has now gone off food, she needs to be paired up soon if you wish to get a clutch. If you do not pair her, she may just reabsorb her follicles and you'll be back to square one. So green light from her side. Your male is easily old enough to breed even if a little on the small side. He is still eating though. I don't think you can do any harm by sticking him in with the female and seeing what happens. Males are much less of a worry since their roll is limited to just the actual pairing. The worst thing would be they don't lock and he stops eating. I'm willing to bet he locks. You can always get him eating again if he stops, but again, I bet he doesn't. Good luck! Go for it.
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls Well he's now in with her... There are a couple of low pressure systems crossing the UK this weekend, so maybe that will also bring them into the mood :)
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls Well I put him in with her, within five minutes noticed what looked like a grain of rice on his vent, which he wiped off on the cork hide.... guess he's ready and releasing sperm plugs !
I was about to say good luck but you have updated already.
Premature whatever! It sure sounds like he's ready.
I know this is hard, but try not to check every few minutes. Give them some space. Check twice a day. Watch out for what your female does - to tell you she is receptive. Did she pee and scent the tub? The male will attempt to mate with her and will assume a "dominant" position as I showed in my first video if she is receptive and he is "keen". Let the "relationship" develop. You may not see a visual lock, but the chances are you will, as they often lock for hours at a time.
The next steps are to separate them when they are done. Refresh the tubs and attempt to feed the male on normal feeding day. If he eats, no worries. If he doesn't, don't stress but take note of his body condition. The female is just recently off food you mentioned, so she will be somewhere around 4-6 weeks from ovulation. This is approximate as they are all different. During this period, I always try to squeeze in a few extra locks without stressing the female too much. Say every 2 weeks until ovulation. Note if they lock or not for your records. The male should not be a problem if he is only working one female. He can go the distance.
This is the best time during the breeding season. She isn't eating, so she also isn't pooing. Tubs stay cleaner for longer. You just need to continue to pair at regular intervals until she ovulates, at which point you can stop pairing.
My next video will cover the female breeding cycle and give a rough timetable and easily recognised milestones for the whole process. I will also cover the males and when I try to pair and how I manage multiple pairings with a single male. I'll try to get this out sooner rather than later so we have all the info we need to progress through the season and get to the next phase in the process.
I can tell you are excited!
Hi Rob! I've watched the first 30s of the video, is it that easy?!?! :P put them together & close the tub!! LOL :D I'm gonna watch the rest now
nice video mate! So this one is the first one a series of a dozen other videos still to come. Cool!!
How many breeding seasons have you done so far Rob?
You know my answer: finishing my first! The last clutch (Killer Blasts at max) should pip next weekend.
Fundamentally its as easy as that but the devil is in the detail. I have been keeping for about 8 years now and this will be my 6th breeding season.
I have a female that is about 1700 grams and only one year old but big female what age
I normally pair my first time females when they reach over 1500gms and are between 2 and 3 years old. That's when I would look at pairing, IF i think they're ready. I like my females to reach 2000gms plus during their build so that they do not drop under 1000gms after they lay. Allow me to explain or qualify these weights and ages.
A younger, smaller female in my experience will go off food sooner and for longer before laying than a larger female. The restriction on her digestive system as she grows follicles is more pronounced in a female that has a smaller girth. So she inevitably looses a greater percentage of her body weight to produce what is usually a smaller clutch. She will loose 50% of her body weight or even more from the time she reaches peak weight during her build compared to her weight just after laying. Egg size is roughly the same, just less of them. She will also end her breeding cycle at a sometimes frighteningly low weight. I consider anything under 1000gms for a female after she has laid is dangerously thin and the snake will need extra care during recovery if it is to survive, never mind go on to lay eggs the following season. Some females bounce back quicker, but some take all year to get back to where they started and this can hamper both their subsequent growth rate and their productiveness in future years.
Young snakes can get to some impressive sizes quite quickly in captivity, however, snakes can and do get fat if they are fed too much. Its not so visible in snakes because the fat is stored in internal fat glands, not under the skin. Just as in any other animal, being “fat” can cause complications during the reproductive process. Excessive sized fat glands can constrict the oviduct for instance, causing issues during ovulation, and especially when laying. If the oviduct is constricted by fat, a snake is much more likely to slug out, have trouble passing eggs and can even get egg bound or prolapse the oviduct. These issues can be fatal.
Feeding regimes in captive snakes are almost always massively overfeeding. We can give it the name “power feeding” if we wish, but again we need to consider snake physiology to get an insight into what we are doing when we overfeed our snakes. Snakes are opportunistic feeders designed to eat whenever food is available, so we can usually get our captive snakes to eat, even if they don’t really need to. When a snake takes in food, unlike a mammal which gets hungry again when its stomach is empty and it needs to feed again to stay active, a snake has an internal fuel tank. It stores nutrients in its liver which can expand to 2 or 3 or more times its normal size, along with the heart, kidneys and pancreas.
This article is specifically on Burmese Pythons but notes that all Python species have the same physiological adaptions. They are being extensively studied due to their status as an invasive species in the everglades. Reticulated Pythons and Ball Pythons show the same physiological adaptions.
The Journal of Experimental Biology 211, 3767-3774 Published by The Company of Biologists 2008
Commentary Digestive physiology of the Burmese python: broad regulation of integrated performance
“An integrated phenomenon, digestion is also characterized by increases in the mass, and presumably the function, of the heart, pancreas, liver and kidneys. Digestion for the Burmese python is a relatively expensive endeavour, evident by the as much as a 44-fold increase in metabolic rate and equivalent in cost to as much as 37% of the mealʼs energy.”
www.nature.com/articles/laban.1027.pdf
I often hear how a 16 month old snake that weighs 1800 gms is “ready to breed” but she may not be anywhere near as large as we think she is. We like to say, ok subtract 100gms for the rat she just ate this week, so she is 1700gms empty. Empty??? Hell no, not empty. Not even close. She still has a full fuel tank, an enlarged liver, heart, kidneys and pancreas that are several times the normal size from all the food we have been giving her. She looks massive and her body condition is great, but she’s just been storing all that food in an enlarged liver and fat glands, not true body weight. And all these enlarged organs that make the snake look great have nothing to do with reproduction. Her reproductive organs may still be immature, even though her body is massive. Her true empty weight might be 1800 gms less 100 gms for the rat she just ate and less another say…. 600 gms for the massively enlarged liver and heart etc. She actually weights 1100gms empty and is a much smaller snake than we think she is. She could probably go for a year without eating with no ill effects at all from the stored nutrients in her liver and fat glands. And at the end of that year she’ll be 30 months old, we’ll get a true “empty weight” and maybe she will actually be ready to breed.
For this reason alone, don’t get expectations too high when trying young first time females. She isn’t as big or mature as we think if we are just basing it on size/weight. Her enlarged liver and other organs may be contributing 30% or more of her bodyweight and her true weight might be considerably smaller. My success rate on first time females under 2 years old but “up to weight” is less than 50%. More than half of those paired simply don't go on to produce a clutch of eggs, even if they were nice and thick and exhibiting build behaviour. Follicle development is not necessarily a guide, as prior to ovulation these animals can and do reabsorb their follicles and then start another build cycle over the next 6 months or so. This is very common in first time females and I believe partly a response to being overfed and not having sufficient internal space for developing follicles.
For first time females in their 3rd year, my success figure goes up considerably to something closer to 75%. Much more internal space in a bigger more mature female. Males I have no issue with breeding in their first year at less than 1000gms. Numbers will differ depending on how we keep our snakes and how much we feed them. No rules here, no right and wrong, but it is just another illustration of how this can vary massively between breeders and how snakes can look mature when they are not.
One of the factors of snake physiology that potentially could put our snakes at risk during breeding is their response to stress and in particular the function of cortisol (stress hormone). In higher animals (mammals in particular), during adverse conditions cortisol shuts down the reproductive system preventing breeding. It also shuts down lactation, sacrificing any nursing young, in order to allow the adult to survive and breed another day. You'll notice this if you breed rats and get it wrong. Applying this same rule to snakes and assuming they won’t breed if they are not ready is incorrect.
Reptiles in general, and snakes in particular, respond very differently to cortisol.
www.researchgate.net/publication/262831858_Stress_and_Reproduction_in_Reptiles
www.seaturtle.org/PDF/MorenoIT_2003_HormonesBehav.pdf
“An increasing number of studies report positive associations between reproduction and corticosterone that contradict the generalization that stress inhibits reproduction. Moderately elevated levels of stress hormones appear to facilitate reproduction by mobilizing energy stores.”
Snake hatchlings are completely independent, don’t suckle and have a chance of survival in lean times even if the parents die. In snakes, stress actually encourages breeding and they will sacrifice themselves in order to reproduce. We have all heard of male snakes being bred to death, not always a mistake made by inexperienced keepers alone and its because of the snakes response to cortisol that makes this possible.
Female snakes too can respond to stress by producing a clutch of eggs when they do not have sufficient body reserves to guarantee their own survival. So it is a physiological adaption of our snakes that makes it perfectly possible to breed them when they have no hope of surviving the breeding process themselves. I think we can agree this would not be a desirable outcome.
Probably a bit more than you asked for, but I hope it helps trying to decide when to breed a first time female.
@@RobertBarracloughRoyalBalls ok excellent that is a lot of information thanks very much 🙏🏴
🙏🙏👌
The maths regarding the weight loss for a young bp is very off, if you start at 1500 she will build on top of that, generally a good few hundred grams at least before even getting newr laying, a small clutch from. A young female is only going to bring her back to her normal weight. She's also in her peak condition physically as she is young, I've heard of a lot more retained clutches in older fatter females. Also... You think they wait till they're 2000 grams in the wild? Lol
This is good feedback.
I realize my statement might be misleading and if I put out numbers they should be accurate. My bad. 800gm to 1000gm weight loss would be from the peak weight they attain during build to the weight they are after laying. We'll touch on this again in part 2 so thank you for pointing this out. For now, let me give you some real numbers from two of my smaller females from last year. I'm interested to compare notes and what results others get.
Pastel Vanilla Mojave Female, 3 years old. 1880gms at the start of pairing. Peak weight during build, 2450gms. Weight after laying an 8 egg clutch, 1386gms. So she gained about 600gms during build, lost about 1050gms by the time she finished laying and ended up with a net loss for the season of 500gms. A bodyweight swing of 45%. She has regained her condition pretty quickly and is ready for pairing again.
Pastel Enchi Clown Female, 3 years old. 1485 grams at the start of pairing. Peak weight during build, 1950gms. Weight after laying a seven egg clutch 1030gms. She gained less than 500gms during build, lost 900gms by the time she finished laying and had a net weight loss of 400gms for the season. Note that while she did not build as well as she should have, she still lost the same 800-1000gms I mentioned when she laid. A bodyweight swing of 62%. Post lay she was painfully small and whilst I didn't get any slugs, the eggs all had weak veins and I already lost 2 during incubation. Definitely a mistake on my part. She has only regained 200gms of this since laying. Whilst it will not kill her, I doubt she will be ready to breed again this year and the clutch might have been wasted anyway. This isn't a good outcome and totally my fault.
Hardly any of my females finish laying their eggs back at the weight where they started. They are invariably lighter in weight, sometimes by quite a bit. The larger females have much more "margins" in body reserves and their % weight swing is less. They cope much better and bounce back much quicker.
I'm always reluctant to make direct comparisons with Ball Pythons in the wild. We pump our females up to 1500gms in 2 years by feeding them far more food than a wild snake would ever see. They are far from their physical peak at this age. They do not reach close to fully grown until 3 or 4 years old even in captivity. Research shows that in the wild it takes them much longer to reach the same sizes. A female in the wild may not reach sexual maturity and breed for the first time until she is 4 years old or even longer. This isn't really comparable with what we do in captivity.
Great subject for the next video. We'll take a look at the Clown Female and I will share with you the "mistake" I made trying to breed her.
You're giving her away? Seriously? 😲
Hi mate. Yep, female Pastel Ball Python, 1 year old is the giveaway for Malaysian subscribers. Actually, by the time I include shipping costs for the International T Shirt giveaway, there isn't much difference in the value. Sorry about that.....the logistics of living on the other side of the planet!
The females will destroy the tub lol
Most snakes like to rearrange the furnishing to suite their taste. Nesting females especially so!