Tracking clutches/live births

Hi all… I’m working on a little database project to track info on all my snakes... most of which are corns but some are live bearing. When I got to the part of tracking breeding/pairings I came up with a list of things to track but thought I might be missing something. If you have any suggestions for additional info to track, naming of the database table, or naming of the items please feel free to comment. Any other comments welcome as well.

This is what I put together so far:

Table: breedings? or pairings? or ???

Items to track in table:

- ID (num)

- NOP (name/desc of pairing/breeding)

- F_ID (father/sire ID)

- M_ID (mother/dam ID)

- BTY (breeding time this year - 1st time bred, 2nd,....)

- FBT (father/sire brumation time)

- MBT (mother/dam brumation time)

- P_DATE (pairing/conseption date)

- B_METHOD (birth - live or egg)

- I_TEMP (incubation temp)

- I_DUR (incubation duration)

- DOB (live birth)

- S_HATCH_DATE (start of hatching - fist hatchling out)

- E_HATCH_DATE (end of hatching - last hatchling out)

- STILLBORN (num)

- SLUGS (num)

- E_LAID (num eggs laid)

- LIVE (num)

- HATCHED (num)

- SUBSTATE


Let me know what you think.

Brumation

Maybe tracking the brumation period of the snake(s) might give some insight, also tracking the temperature of the room the snake(s) are brumating in, possibly to give insight to the size of clutch or even double clutching. Maybe a longer or shorter brumation period may be beneficial but who knows right???? Just a thought!!! I mean you would have to track it over a few breeding seasons! I'm no expert but since brumating is the beginning of the breeding process I assume it may have something to do with the outcome!!

That's an excellent point. I'll add Female and male brumation time just in case they were different.

No idea if it's important but since you're covering just about everything you might track the time of the pre-lay shed.

I named my pairing table *clutches* the primary key is the clutch ID.

2007.1.xx
year.clutch#.#viable eggs
(viable eggs entered after they are laid & slugs are counted)

If a female double clutched the ID would be 2007.1b.xx

I have columns for estimated pipping time, weight before breeding, and a memo field for notes.

You have more info then I do. I put brumation time into their individual books that I keep for each snake. I just note the date I stop feeding, when they went into brumation. When they come out, I note that, but it's in each of their books, not in a general data base. When female is bred it's noted in her book and in the male that I bred her to. I note which female he bred to...again in his book. Laying dates and how long it took are noted in the mother's book. Babies are placed in numbered containers with hatch date and sex and which mom/dad. I keep individual records for each. If there was anything odd about the pregnancy it's noted in the mother's book.

Mabe you could keep track of the size of the eggs and hatchling when born. Mabe also the weight.

No idea if it's important but since you're covering just about everything you might track the time of the pre-lay shed.

Click to expand...

You're right... that's a good one to track. Thank you. I'm trying to keep info about the parents and info about the clutch/live separated. On that note there's a couple things I might have to remove from my list. Brumation times and shedding would be better kept in a table specific to the snakes themselves as MegF has suggested below.

I named my pairing table *clutches* the primary key is the clutch ID.

2007.1.xx
year.clutch#.#viable eggs
(viable eggs entered after they are laid & slugs are counted)

If a female double clutched the ID would be 2007.1b.xx

I have columns for estimated pipping time, weight before breeding, and a memo field for notes.

Click to expand...

You know... I had my table named clutches at first but it didn't make sense for live bearing snakes. My thought was to make two tables, one for clutches and one for live bearing, or to make one table that would store data for both. I keep going back and forth on that one. I'm using an automatic generated number for the ID and tracking all the info that would make that clutch unique from any other. At one point I was using a similar method of naming clutches but then I had a clutch with 20 good eggs slowly go bad and I ended up with only 5. In that case the name/ID of the clutch had to change or it was misleading. :shrugs:

You have more info then I do. I put brumation time into their individual books that I keep for each snake. I just note the date I stop feeding, when they went into brumation. When they come out, I note that, but it's in each of their books, not in a general data base. When female is bred it's noted in her book and in the male that I bred her to. I note which female he bred to...again in his book. Laying dates and how long it took are noted in the mother's book. Babies are placed in numbered containers with hatch date and sex and which mom/dad. I keep individual records for each. If there was anything odd about the pregnancy it's noted in the mother's book.

Click to expand...

That's all good info to track. When I'm done I should be tracking all of that. If organized correctly I should be able to pull up info on each snake to compare year to year or all snakes to come up with some averages. Once a database is set and data is being entered it can be a pain to change something later. I'm trying to get most of it right from the start if possible. We'll see how it goes.

Mabe you could keep track of the size of the eggs and hatchling when born. Mabe also the weight.

Click to expand...

Yes... also good things to track. The weight of the hatchlings would be tracked in the "snakes" table. I could put something in to track the weight of an entire clutch of eggs though. You could at least come up with an average weight per egg.