Macklot's breeding question

[TrpnBils]

Anybody here have experience breeding these guys? We've been working with a pair for the past few years (they're between 4 and 5 years old right now and definitely a 1.1 pair) and took our first crack at breeding them this year without any success. We cycled them according to the regimen in "The Reproductive Husbandry of Boas and Pythons" and both are well past the minimum size requirements that breeders like Dave and Tracy Barker recommend. I've talked to the Barkers and some other former breeders a couple of times, and from what I've read the pythons are "exceedingly easy" (as one reference put it) to breed in captivity but we haven't seen a single hookup, courting behavior, or "maybe" lock since we started pairing them 1 week on, 1 week off in November.

Anyone else have any other ideas? They're set up in tubs with temps ranging from 78-88 on thermostats with moderate humidity. They both eat like pigs when offered food, and haven't displayed any signs of health problems since we've had them.

 

[Sdaji]

November is an odd time of year to be pairing them up, regardless of your hemisphere, unless you're trying to get in early in the northern hemisphere.

I assume you're talking about Australian Liasis fuscus AKA Liasis mackloti as opposed to the non Australian Liasis mackloti. I really don't care what name people put on them, but as an aside, with everyone wanting to put different names on things these days it seems bizarre that many people want to lump Australian Water Pythons with some quite different Indonesian snakes. Then again, I suppose the splitters want to split to get their own names on, and the guy who named Liasis fuscus is now too dead to care.

Anyway, assuming you're talking about Australian Water Pythons, they're very flexible in the timing of their breeding, I know of them laying eggs in just about every month of the year, but they generally have their peak mating around June-August, ovulate July-September, lay eggs September-November, hatch November-January. If you're in the northern hemisphere I suppose peak mating would be around December-February.

Australia has upgraded to the metric system. 78-88 units of temperature doesn't mean much to me, sorry. I can do miles, feet and inches, but gallons, ounces and weird temperature scales confuse me.

Water Pythons must be pretty easy to breed if I manage to do it reliably. Perhaps you have two females or an ugly female. If you're sure they're a male/female pair, try introducing them through winter and into early spring rather than just one month in... November is what you call late fall? If that doesn't help, you can try getting another male. Male Water Pythons absolutely hate each other in mating season and after a brief fight (or long fight if you want to be cruel and let them fight for a few hours) whichever one you leave in with the female will usually be keen to mate. I've never tried, but you could probably use a male of another species of python to stir your male Water Python up in the same way.

I haven't found humidity to be of any importance to anything other than their sloughing. I haven't found them too fussy about temperatures. They're tolerant of 'hot', happy in 'warm', they don't need hard cooling to realise it's winter and cycle properly, but if you do freeze the crap out of them they tolerate it well.

They're absolutely awesome snakes, I wish you all the best of luck in producing more of them!

 

[orientalis]

Pythons don't always reproduce at the minimum age or weight and can often take 5, 6 and 7 years to obtain a first clutch.

Some specimens never show interest in mating and is why it's always handy to have a colony of 5 (3.2) to obtain success faster.