OK for a general breeding outline here is what you are going to want to do. lets assume you are going to brumate, this will increase your chances for successful breeding, you first want to fast your corns for 15 days, meaning keep them on their normal heat and stop feeding them for 15 days. This will allow their digestive systems to clear so that during brumation nothing is just laying in their stomachs. Next is the brumation, you can either gradually reduce the temperature or drop it at once, I have done both and have not seen any adverse effects either way. Nature gradually cools so in all reality by this time of the year your corns have sensed a change in the weather already. For brumation you want to keep the maximum temperature around 55 and the minimum no colder than lets say 35. Optimum temps would be closer to 40. You can brumate them as long as you want but the suggested time would be 2 1/2 to 3 months. I begin cooling on December 1 and begin warming them back up mid to late February. That covers brumating. After they have been warmed up the female's appetite should explode. You can feed her an appropiate meal depending on her size about every 3-5 days. She will then have her post brumation shed. This is usually when I begin putting them together. I put males into the females cage, I believe if she is releasing pheromones that they will be in her cage and you will have a better chance of successful copulation. After putting the male in with the female he will/should be gin to court her, moving his chin up her back. Eventually he will copulate with her, meaning his hemipenes will be inserted into her. During this stage they will be realitively still except some minor twitching. DO NOT DISTURB THEM. After he has separated from the female you have two options. Depending on the size of the enclosure you can leave the male in with the female or remove him and place him back in his cage. If a successful copulation has occurred I put the male back in his cage with fresh water and possibly a meal if he is wants it the next day. After two days of separation I put them back together. I would continue this until the female has her pre-egg laying shed. This usually will take place 30-35 days after a successful copulation. After this shed it is an appropiate time to put the nest box in with the female. The nest box is simply a tubbeware or something similar with a lid and a hole big enough that the female can fit into it. Inside the box I use damp spaghnum moss. The spaghnum moss should be wet enough that when you squeeze it it kind of stays together but should not drip any water. Mind you the moss may need to be changed if it sits for awhile before the female lays her eggs. Once the female lays her eggs you will need to incubate the eggs. Any incubator will work, my first year when money was a little tight I took an old microwave cabinet that had to shelves in the bottom, lined the bottoms of the two shelves with heat tape attached to a thermostat and put the eggs in a container with vermiculite(which should have the same moisture as the moss, squeeze it and no water should come out but it should clump together) and set the thermostat to 83 degrees. At that temperature your eggs should hatch between 50-60 days of laying. I think thats it if I have forgotten anything or forgot to answer a question please let me know. Best Of LUCK:cheers:
