Mating!
With some fear and trepidation we introduced our two VERY small males to the VERY large female, and of course nature provided all our fears unnecessary and within 30 minutes they were all in a big tangle and mating was going on.
Snakes have to be together for a long time: the females only ovulate after mating has started, and they still have to be fertilised after that, so we are leaving these guys together for the next 3 - 4 weeks.
If this is successful she will be pregnant for 9 months, so we have a long time to wait, but I hope we are at least on the way to our first breeding programme.
On first introduction the two small males stuck closely together. Candoia bibroni bibroni apparantly like to mate with more than one male if possible. These two are siblings from the same litter, so the genetics should be the same whichever one is sucessful.
One of the males explores the huge female
Tangled tails hopefully mean mission accomplished - or at least underway
After mating she retired to her bath: but he stayed all over her, still courting. The difference in head size is very obvious here, but size really did NOT seem to matter....
Snakes have to be together for a long time: the females only ovulate after mating has started, and they still have to be fertilised after that, so we are leaving these guys together for the next 3 - 4 weeks.
If this is successful she will be pregnant for 9 months, so we have a long time to wait, but I hope we are at least on the way to our first breeding programme.
On first introduction the two small males stuck closely together. Candoia bibroni bibroni apparantly like to mate with more than one male if possible. These two are siblings from the same litter, so the genetics should be the same whichever one is sucessful.
One of the males explores the huge female
Tangled tails hopefully mean mission accomplished - or at least underway
After mating she retired to her bath: but he stayed all over her, still courting. The difference in head size is very obvious here, but size really did NOT seem to matter....
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