I'm curious how everybody breeds their animals? Do you drop temps or keep them the same year around? What time of year do you pair animals up? That type of stuff.

With me, I've done it a couple different ways but this is the plan for this breeding season.

Starting November 1st I’ll make a few modification to my breeding room. First will be temperature. I’m going to drop my nighttime temps about 4-5 degrees. I also drop my daytime temps as well from the standard summer hotspot temps of 89-92 down to about 86-87.

I breed my Bp’s in 32qt Sterlite tubs which don’t seem to allow much temperature gradient. I feel lowing the daytime temps will allow a little better temp gradient throughout day and night as well as a better overall season change to stimulate follicular development.

Also on November 1st I’ll shut off my snakeroom fans which I use all summer to circulate air as well as lower the humidity a bit. Shutting off the fan along with more frequent misting will hopefully give the animals even more stimuli to begin with development.

November 15th I’m going drop the nighttime temps the rest of the way to about 79-80 degrees for the hotspot which will give me about 72-74 degrees cool side. I’ll keep temps here for the duration of the breeding season.

Max lows will be 79-80 degree hotspot and 72-74 cool side for nighttime. Daytime temps 86-87 degrees hotspot and 80-79 degrees cool side.

November 15th I’ll start pairing males with females. If the male locks right up, once they finish and separate I give the male 48hours rest before he moves on to the next female in rotation.

If I don’t witness any locks or at least courting behavior I’ll move the male to the next female in the rotation. No rest is necessary since no breeding activity was witnessed. I’ll repeat that process until I witness the males copulating with females, after copulation they always get some rest time and a small meal offered.

I try and make sure all females in the breeding rotation see a male at least once a month. A couple times during the breeding season I’ll give everybody a good rest and not pair anything up for about a week.

In the beginning of January I start palpating all the females in the breeding rotation about once a week. If I can feel follicles I mark the tube with a little sticker along with their record card.

Once I figure out which females are developing I start prioritizing the females in rotation along with the genes at play. All recessive gene carrying males stay with the same females they are assigned all season. On the other hand once I get an idea of which females are developing first I switch those females over to the highest priority co-dom males. The idea is to get eggs from the highest priority co-dom projects early in the season.
I’ll pair animals up mid November up until May or even June for the late goers.

It seems i make small changes every season ! In general I manipulate my tape temp and my breeding room has a gradual ambient change with seasonal changes. I keep my tape at 95 degrees 24-7 during the off season . Somewhere around 10-15 I start to lower the tape a few degrees a night a few hours at a time until I get down to 84 degrees for 12 hours and 90 degrees daytime on the tape. This year I will be adding a radient heater just so the room ambient temps never goes below 70 degrees. I selectively choose pairings and rotate the male into the females tub. As long as lockups are happening he stays with her mon-fri and is removed for rest on the weekends and offered food. All animals are offered food weekly ! We weigh and ducument each animal bi weekly and young males are taken off the breeding schedule if massive weight loss is noticed. Every witnessed lock is documented. Every introduction is documented as well as weight and any observations. These conditions are continued until 3-15 and temps are returned to normal. All sheds are documented in prep for egg laying. Once the females lay they are offered food twice a week for the first month after they return feeding to recover from laying. We then return to a 7 day deeding schedule.