General breeding weight??

[Southern_Boa_Gurl]

Just curious what everyone's opinions/experience are with this.  What are the recommended weights of females vs males for breeding??  Please also post any experiences you've had as well. 

Also as far as adding multiple males to one female, what's the limit or is there one??

[Gloryhound]

From the numerous polls I've seen Females need to be at least 18 months and 1500 grams on average.  Now for me other factors come into the equation.  If I have a 3 year old girl and she is above 1200 grams I will give her a try.  If I just get a slow grower and after 4 or 5 years she still is not up to weight I have to look into things a little heavy and do some soul searching.

As far as males go 6 months and they "can" be little horn snakes.  Generally I like to see at least 500 grams before pairing them up, but I'm not going to say I haven't put a snake into a rotation that was not quite 500 grams either!

[Southern_Boa_Gurl]

Lol, thanks for the response!!!

I've generally read most places that:  Males, old enough to handle the female/at least 500-800 grams... Females, around 2-3 yr old and at least 1500 grams.

Anything you want to comment on the multiple males to one female question??

[Rick247]

I breed a couple 18 month pastels girls this year.They where lillte over 1500 grams. One started to tail wag as soon as I put my male in with her. She has ovulated and I am expecting eggs anytime now. The other one looks like she is building. I have seen people breed males really small. Most will tell you like the above post and wait till 500 grams. If you breed a small female and she goes off feed you may want to cut the breeding back. Sometimes it will make them eat more.

[Southern_Boa_Gurl]

I breed a couple 18 month pastels girls this year.They where lillte over 1500 grams. One started to tail wag as soon as I put my male in with her. She has ovulated and I am expecting eggs anytime now. The other one looks like she is building. I have seen people breed males really small. Most will tell you like the above post and wait till 500 grams. If you breed a small female and she goes off feed you may want to cut the breeding back. Sometimes it will make them eat more.

Thanks Rick!! 

I won't be breeding anytime soon, but just trying to learn as much as possible

[Gloryhound]

For the multiple male part it is fine.  The big thing is making sure you can track the genetics.  Breeding a Clown male and Hypo male to a piebald girl is not a good idea since you will not know if the offspring our double het for Hypo pied or clown pied.  Also since more than one male can fertilize different eggs in the female one egg could be Hypo pied while the other is clown pied, but again no way of knowing.

Now then if you are dealing with co-dom and dominate traits it can make for some interesting clutches.  We are actually trying it this year with a cinnimon male and mojave male tagging up on a normal proven breeder female.  Actually I've heard that by swapping the guys around like this they can actually smell the presence of the other male that was in previously and this can motivate them to breed.  Well we didn't see a lot of locks come from that grouping and the only ones we did see were from the Cinnimon, but we will see if she gives us eggs if the little mojave was getting any tail action or not.

[dieselbrnr73]

thanks for asking that Souther Boa Girl! I was thinking asking the same question. Good info so far i think.

[Southern_Boa_Gurl]

thanks for asking that Souther Boa Girl! I was thinking asking the same question. Good info so far i think.

You're welcome hun!! 

I've always wondered the small stuff first. 

I'm not up to par on all the genetics as I'm just getting started in Balls so I'll invest more time learning this stuff and buying books too

[abi21491]

I too have heard 1500g on females and 500g+ on males, but smaller is not unheard of. I know some breeders will breed 1100 gram females (I wouldn't) and some males will breed way smaller than 500g. I personally think the bigger the better, for both animals.... As long as they aren't overweight. That can lower your chance of good, viable eggs.

[Gloryhound]

I'm not comfortable enough to try it, but I do know at least one breeder that has successfully bred 800 gram females on a fairly regular basis.  I really would not recommend that for the beginner as I think, lets clarify that I said think and not know, that the potential risks would be a little too high with a female ball python at that weight.  I also believe these 800 gram females he breeds are slow growers and are at least 3 years old if not older.

On to another note, when we started out we used to talk to Michael Cole of Ball room pythons south (probably more than he wanted to hear from us) and his basic idea is once they reach 1200 grams he puts them in breeding rotations.  His belief being that if nature tells them they are ready they will go, nature says they are not ready they will not go.  We like his ideas on this and as we get some experience this is probably what we will be doing.  Right now though we are too new at it and felt it safe to do 1500 grams and if they go they go, if they don't they don't.  A lot of how we are establishing our breeding program has come from Michael Cole as we found he has been one of the easiest breeders we have dealt with to talk to.