More babies?!

So I found Mumma Fifi under her hide like this the other day… and the first thing I thought was ‘Oh no she’s laid eggs!’ Other than when she laid her first clutch last year, I’ve never seen her lay like this so I suddenly panicked. I haven’t bred her this year, but I’ve heard that Royal Pythons can retain fertile sperm and become pregnant again the following year without being paired again. Obviously I lifted her up and thankfully there were no eggs (I’m not prepared for more hatchlings yet!) so then I decided to research the likelihood of her becoming pregnant from the retained sperm.

Now a lot of people think this is myth, but there is proof that it has happened on more than one occasion. Commonly it occurs when a female has locked with a male several times. It is said that for fertilisation to take place, 3-5 locks is all that is required. However I know a lot of breeders will lock several different morphs of male with one female… which is known as ‘over breeding’ and equates to a lot of sperm! Some of this sperm can be retained and remain fertile until the following year when the female ovulates again. Therefore theoretically, a female can produce fertile eggs without having been paired with any males that year using the retained sperm from the previous year. A scary (or possibly exciting) thought if you weren’t expecting any hatchlings for that year!

There has also been cases where a female has been ‘over bred’ with a morph one year (lets say a Spider) then bred with a different morph the following year (lets say a Mojave). Then the female has laid eggs with both Spider and Mojave morphs in, by becoming fertilised from the retained sperm from the Spider and new sperm from the Mojave! Crazy stuff!

One thing that is very important to remember if you are planning on breeding several male morphs to one female is: Different males can fertilize different eggs in the same clutch, but two males cannot fertilize the same egg. For example, say you had a Normal female, a Pastel male and a Spider male and you wanted to make a Bumblebee this would not work as you would only produce 33% Normals, 33% Pastels and 33% Spiders. To get a Bumblebee you would have to breed a Pastel with a Spider, to produce 25% Normals, 25% Pastels, 25% Spiders and 25% Bumblebees. Alternatively you could breed Bumblebee with a Normal, and you would also produce 25% Normals, 25% Pastels, 25% Spiders and 25% Bumblebees. Obviously all these percentages are an estimated result of the genes you use to breed, and the results change from snake to snake and don’t always follow this prediction.

To have a play about with genetics and results from breeding different morphs take a look at the Genetic Calculater on World of Ball Pythons:

http://www.worldofballpythons.com/wizard/

This comes in really handy and is great to work out what you need to breed if you’re trying to produce a goal morph Royal Python.

xoxo