BREEDING QUESTION

[kl]

This is probably a question better for the advanced section of the forum but lately that section never seems to get read.. How long do you think it would take to to exhaust a male's viable sperm in the short term when you are letting him breed twice a day? If your trying to breed 2 females to one male knowing that the female has only about a week or so window, would you intermingle the females each day or complete the breeding period of one female and then move on to the 2nd. Generally I like to get between 10 to 12 matings in per female over a 7 day period

KL

[Seadation]

What species are you referring to Kim? I have been intermingling the females each day. If you stay on one female until her breeding window ends then maybe the breeding window for the other female will be over also and you missed your opportunity. Never a bad thing to have several males ready to go. But then again my experience is pretty limited.
Ron

[kl]

Blotched. Females for me go for about 7 days and males 3 to 4 weeks. I have more females than males. Sometimes females will only go 5 to 6 days. In 7 yrs of trying, I've only once had one female become gravid when the male had mated with another female previously in the same season, despite being able to get that male to mate several times with a 2nd female.

KL

[Scotts1au]

Hi Kim, I know I've mentioned this before but I strongly suspect that mating in the afternoon is more effective and more replicates natural behavior better. In general, mine seem to do a bit of a process, working up to mating later in the day.

From years of observing mine this seems to be a pattern, maybe due to receptiveness of the females???

Regarding how often - it is hard to say, but I would limit to once a day per male. That being said, this year I limited mating to one male with several females and only had about half my normal amount of babies. There are a number of potential reasons for this but maybe he ran out of puff. :-)

[kl]

I've been doing the first pairings in early afternoon and one more early evening. I'm trying to get each male to breed 2 females.

Kim

[Richard.C]

interesting question kim

ive not had to worry to much about a lack of males woth the blotchies due to holding back the biggest babies,tended to lead to the big bubs always being the males

ive seen males cover females many times over a day,record was 6 times late one afternoon over a four hour period,same pr each time,i to have noticed what scott mentioned with afternoons seeming to be more akin to happy hour,most activity,which being outdoors and at that time of year possably an artifact of needing to be fully warmed,addmittedly though,earlier in the day they seem just as warm and active,ive also seen mu domonant male cover two females on a given day,usually he does have a preference for one but sometimes he just goes for whats in front of him possably because the more hassled has tried to hide from him

he goes as long as females are cycling,which can be over 6 weeks some seasons when females go at different times

oidoors with my northerns,ive found similar but at best have only got 2 matings per day frpm any pr,and with at least a 6 hour gap between matings,the male northerns seem to expend to much energy in the process and need recooperatint time,lol,though mine do mate when its at its coldest,most seasons ive had all females cycle with in a week of each other but some years the windows stayed open for 5 or 6 weeks instead of the usual 1 to 2 weeks,due in part to cold temps during mating period

this season all was again thrown out the window and i had females cycling in earlu june,others oddly one being housed with the early june cycler ,cycling in late july early august,a near on 2 month gap between them,both were covered by the same male,and both had good normal sized litters,one dropped early oct,the other early december,again the 2 month gap

males windows can stay open quite some time compared to females,but again i guess it depends also on available conditions,as when temps warm up consistently,in nature theu have the shriveling of hemipenes,but yeah,males are capable of producing viable sperm long after females windows shut,long before some females windows open as well,but conditions would likely play an itegeral role there in regards to how fast the temps rise to optimum level

i was checking mu blotchies today for babies,suposed to be only 19 degrees here today,was raining all morning,suns been popping out a bit this arvo and a few blotchies were out basking,mostly gravid females but a couple of males to,and suprosingly even though i see it alot,they felt very warm to touch,like its 30 degrees out type warm,though i have done a massive weeding,so they had probably warmed them selves in the piles i left,but yeah,they have an uncanny ability to warm them selves in cool weather,and even be quite active,as im sure scott sees,some cool days u dont even expect them to pop out in spring yet they have and sometimes they are even mating

[kl]

Richard, I usually hold back babies based on color and pattern and not size. Sometimes the smaller babies have more intense color and that's probably why they tend to be females. If I'm fortunate enough to get any offspring this yr maybe I'll try and hold back a larger baby. Ray's always yelling at me for not keeping more of them.

KL

[Ophidiophile]

Kim and everybody else that's posted here know this, but for everyone else's benefit and to clarify Kim's question, let me just say that Blotched males are insane breeding machines. My male would breed about once an hour for many hours of the day if I let him. And sometimes between breedings, he would still be latched on the the female's neck probably as a mate guarding strategy ("This one's mine!"). This year, which is the first year I bred Blotchies, my pair bred 14 times over 6 days. The most I let the male breed her in a single day was four times. To get at Kim's question, I would suspect (but I don't actually know for sure - I don't know if anyone does) that after 2 consecutive breedings, it might be diminishing returns in terms of the male having much sperm left. I did mostly breed them in the late afternoon after I came home from work but the one time I put them together in the morning, they bred almost immediately. After 6 days of breeding, the female began chasing the male off and biting at him - hope he got the job done. But even if not, it was at least some feeling of accomplishment to get them successfully brumated at pretty cold temperatures and get the 14 locks.

Breed1-31-2015c.jpg

[kl]

Nice picture.

It's a question that's of concern when your trying to breed more than 1 female to the same male especially where you are letting that male breed 2 to 3 times a day. The percentage of females getting gravid despite breeding is low so you want to increase the chances of getting some babies. I'm just trying to decide if it's better to let one female run her course before trying a 2nd female or would that doom the chances of that 2nd female from getting gravid. It would be one thing if I knew a female would breed a couple weeks but they don't. Despite the males willingness to breed over and over, the amount of viable sperm must be able to be exhausted or at least reduced in the short term but how fast do they replenish it.

Kim

[mark_w]

Interesting questions Kim. Not sure I have any answers, but interesting! With my intermedia, I cannot get my males to go more than once per day. Also, they are most willing in the late morning/middle of the day. I got a male to go tonight, but only when he tried this lunchtime but failed. He's a first time breeder this year and the female that I'm pairing him with sometimes gets fed up with him biting and scrabbling around and chases him off after 15 or 20 minutes.

With my scincoides, again I can't get my male to go more than once per day, and he will only go in the later afternoon/evening. If I place a female with him at lunchtime, he will ignore her. The same female at 6 or 8pm, he is biting on straight away.

With my occipitalis the males... Oh wait, I'm daydreaming now!!!

Mark.

[Richard.C]

i dont think males burn out fast with viable sperm,i think from what ive seen its more to do with females windows

one issue when a males going,and milty females decide to cycle at same time,ive seen this with group kept ones and single kept ones is a single male will often show preference for one particular female,with the single male,u can drop a few females in that are right to go and they generally go straight for that same female,perhaps shes giving off the strongest phermones,some males though you can get covering a couple of girls,outdoors with the blotchies when they are going same thing,the males often pick the one female and concentrate there efforts there,occaisionally though they may cover a second at
same time,but usually they show most interest to the original girl,my main male,the old vic alpine boy ,once done with one lass ,seaps to the next,when the first ones window shuts,or perhaps when a 2nd girls phermones are stronger than the originals,he just shuts interest in first girl and bang its number twos turn,he often keeps going onto the next as well,but outdoors there windows arent hugely different timingwise,so generally about 4 weeks has been his longest run of covering different females

another thing to keep in mind ,i see it with younger males is some are gung ho and chase anything that moves ,so if one females signalling shes ripe to go they can get to excited and try any others as well,its usually a tine of year where theres alot of flightyness and if something runs,the males often chase and grab and ask questions later,which could explain some matings where babies dont come

[Scotts1au]

I do think that they run out of puff, maybe exhausting their sperm relatively early with a finite capacity for successful mating. As it stands this year with my experiment with one single male and six females is that I only got babies from what I believe was four of them and progressively fewer babies form subsequent births - 9 babies from the first female, and only a total of 8 live babies from subsequent births (excluding 3 stillborns - unrelated problem).

This is the worst result that I've had, but I believe that blueys unlike mammals for example have a finite supply at the start of a season which starts with the spermocyte development in later winter (hence swelling of the testes), maturation in spring and tapering off toward the end of their annual cycle, rather than an continuing cycle as in humans for example.

I think that the benefit of having multiple males for example is that once the dominant males are exhausted for the year, the others take over.