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Doozy

could it also be possible that the clutch was split between the two snakes? If the anery het amel male was the father, it still doesn't explain how many snows I hatched in the clutch with no amels. Now if both the snow AND the anery het amel were the father, that might provide a little more explanation as to the amount of snows.
 
Yep, each egg in a clutch can have a different father. We had this happen last year.

I'm not sure where/when/why sperm are retained. I imagine if she retained sperm last year from that breeing instead of using it all right away, that could be why slugs were generated last year, and where the normals came from this year. It definitely is a lot more likely than any of the alternatives. ;)
 
hmmm...this is good info to know. Thanks guys! Sorry I seemed pessemistic, but I was just going crazy..."Where the hell are my amels and what are these 2 guys doing here!?!?" lol :)

Now next question, is there any way to avoid a retention of sperm? Or at least be able to predict it? I would assume that a healthy fertile clutch with no slugs would use pretty much all available fertile sperm, right?
 
so would a clutch that was 100% fertile be a sign that there more than likely isn't any retained sperm in the female? Or is it more just a "maybe" thing.

(i don't like this no edit button thing...)
 
Those questions I couldn't answer. The only known cases of sperm retention I've had were ones that produced second clutches, never over a winter. I wonder if a good (cold) brumation can kill off any retained sperm. :shrugs:
 
Not sure if cold will kill sperm, but generally heat sure will. Maybe the thing to do after each breeding season is to warm the females up dramatically to try to kill off any lingering sperm. Of course, I don't know of anyone who has actually done that experimentally. The "magic temperature" I have always heard was 86 degrees, but that is just hearsay. I do know that I do NOT let my animals, prebreeding thru egg-laying, to go over 83 degrees, and the eggs not over 82 degrees. Just to be safe.
 
Really interesting food for thought in this thread. I guess it would really screw you up if you bought a proven female to test breed your male for whatever trait and the results made you believe one thing when really they were affected from a breeding 12+ months earlier... that'd suck!

Makes me wonder about my aztec girl who layed 3 weeks ago and bred last year with a previous owner, I bred her to an anery het amel mot this year and she was bred to a snow last year...I suppose those two aren't different enough to worry me, but it would suck if I was trying to prove my male het for amel and he wasn't but it got passed on from last years male....wow, I got all long winded!
 
Heh, yeah this is always a possibility, and it could suck if the timing was bad. Especially if you're counting on "known hets" for a project. (Need to add that into the "Murphy's Laws" article, Rich, LOL.)

The one thing I've noticed is that kids from different males usually (usually) stick out from each other, pattern wise. If we can get the inheritance of some other things hammered out, like head patterns, it would probably help some, too.
 
If only I could be so lucky to have had one particular female retain sperm from last year's breeding! She's het butter and stripe and was bred to my carmot het butter male who died later in the year. The clutch she laid last year was almost entirely slugs and the 1 or 2 fertile eggs didn't make it to hatching. I bred her this year to my amel stripe (best pairing currently available at the time) and she laid an entirely fertile clutch. I would probably faint if any caramel or butter motley/stripes hatched out!
 
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