Breeding sizes

[Greebo]

I was recently taking to some people about breeding. These people mentioned that they would not be able to mate their male Darwin with their female as the male was too large and the female would become egg bound.
This was news to me. I didn't think it worked that way. (I still don't think that it does).
These people have been keeping snakes for quite a while but don't know as much as they would like people to think IMO.
Are they right about the eggbound theory or are they full of it?

[Ramsayi]

Eggbinding has zero to do with the size of the male used.

[Troy K.]

I think that they have been lead astray there somwhere. We often use big males (8kg bhp) over smaller females (4-5kg bhp) and have never had a problem yet.

[Splitmore]

I personally think egg binding is more due to husbandry issues rather than the size or age of the snake. I've bred many childrens at 18 months old and never had one get egg bound, in fact I've only ever had two or three snakes get egg bound ever. Lets face it, in the wild a young or small snake is still going to mate with a male and if they got egg bound every time then you wouldn't see too many females make it to adulthood.
One thing I'd be fairly certain of though is that the male would have zero to do with the female becoming eggbound

[Slateman]

This is interesting.
one of my friend do have large collection and all his females are fine and lay healthy clutches. only one of them have problems each year. Some of the eggs are egg bound or when eggs are laid, they are fertile but don't survive to live more than week. last year he saved 1 hatchie from entire clutch. incubated in same condition like the other eggs and the female have same treatment like the other coastal females.
i was helping him a lot last season, but this one female do have constant problems.

I also don't think that male size have anything to do with egg binding.

[Jason]

i would have to agree that the males size wouldnt effect the size of the egg. at the end of the day the only thing that goes into the egg from the male is sperm and we all know thats very small. imo the size of the egg is determined by the amount of nutrients etc the girl puts into it, which i believe would have something to do with her size. last yr i bred an 18months of girl and a 3yr old girl, size difference between them was considerable and this was also seen in the size of the eggs they laid.

[Moreliaman]

Ive heard years ago about a few big cornsnake breeders in USA having problems with eggbound females, they'd put it down to the stomach muscles not being fully formed with the underlying problem being the snakes were kept in tubs most of their life with little or no cage furnishings to crawl up or over.

Eggbinding if the males too small ??

[wokka]

There are many causes of eggbinding. The father of the clutch contributes heretible factors to the females propensity to eggbinding in relation to the eggs, however I believe most problems with eggbinding will come from the mothers physical condition at the time of laying.. The fathers weight or size at mating would have little to do with it.
In cattle there are bulls with high prepensity to calving problems and bulls with a low likelihood . The bulls weight at mating has nothing to do with it although does influence fertility.