Trying to get it on...
Sow the royal oats, etc?
Well, MOST of my boys are ready. I have one male that is sadly not prepared to grow up this season. Poor Pee Oh Gee isn't making any sperm plugs... Dang. I was hoping to pair him up with a couple of poss het Ghosts this season, but unless he starts "developing" soon, we may be out of luck this season.
Anyway, speaking of sperm plugs, here they are.
They look like Flying Nuns hats, and unlike other members of the animal species, they come in packets that you can just push out of the cloaca of the snake.
No magical manuevers or anything, just push (the right way). I will hopefully get a couple of photos to demonstrate soon enough, but I need Joel to help me.
They are not that big, and this photo that I took a while back is from a full grown 1000 gram male snake. The smaller the animal, the smaller the sperm plug.
Anyway, to those of you who have been unawares this whole time, I am discussing the birds and the bees of snakes, so bear with me.
..............You need sperm to fertilize the egg.
*gasp!*
So, if you plan on breeding a male, and you are not sure if he is ready, it is best to check if he is producing said sperm.
These males are producing sperm, but EVEN IF THEY ARE PRODUCING SPERM DOESN'T MEAN THEY KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING!!!
Case in point... My silly Genetic Stripe has yet to prove to me that he has any idea what goes where.
"My head goes under the coils, and.... then what?" You do notice that the tails are aligned together, so I am hoping a couple more tries and he will get it!
Here is my Pied with one of my poss het girls (who unfortunately had a run in with a rat), trying to get himself aligned correctly. She is not having it either...
And of course, my all star super awesome Enchi male, who basically is born to breed. He has had no trouble remembering what goes where, and THIS, my friends, is a pretty much solid lock. (The alignment is a bit off from perfect here too, but I'm pretty sure he got something going)
So there you go.
Snakey boys to Snakey men...
I'm so proud.
No comments:
Post a Comment