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Guide to Royal Python Breeding

Here is a simple guide to breeding your royal python. There is no doubt that successfully breeding your royals and producing healthy offspring is a fascinating and rewarding experience. Before embarking on breeding however you need to be sure you will be able to find good homes for any offspring you produce and be prepared to keep the hatchlings for a considerable time if you are unable to find buyers when they are ready to leave. You also need to be prepared for possible disappointment and frustration when your females don't seem to want to breed or your males seem uninterested in the females or you lose eggs or hatchlings. The potential obstacles though make it feel like even more of an achievement when you succeed and hatch your first clutch!
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The process starts for us in around November when we see the first signs that our females are preparing to breed. Usually they start to really feed well getting almost retic-like in their eagerness to feed! We are always more careful opening tubs at this time of year as they can fly right out to take the food. We do not cool our animals or specifically change the day length as royals originate from near the equator where the days and temperatures stay fairly constant. We feel that royals are more responsive to changes in air pressure and will often breed readily when there is low pressure and a period of consistent high pressure seems to stimulate them to ovulate. We wait until our females are at least 1.5kg, although a female may be able to breed smaller than that we don't believe in risking our young females for the sake of an early clutch. Breeding takes a lot out of a female and she will lose a lot of weight after laying so if she has no reserves going into the process you could potentially lose her.

Bowl Wrapping

We start pairing in January/February depending on where specific females are in their cycle. We don't use ultrasound but judge our females based on palpating for follicles and their general behaviour and appearance. We don't want to waste our males by pairing them to females who are a long way from ovulating so we look for signs that they are building good follicles - usually they will be staying at the cool end of their tub, be bowl wrapping, refusing food and starting to get brighter in colour and we will be able to feel marble sized follicles when palpating them. 

Pairing (known as "Locking")

We introduce the males in the evening normally as royals are generally bolder and more active at night. We leave them together for 3 days but if the male locks straight away we remove him and rest him again and feed him. We check regularly for locks and record them on the female's breeding card and usually take a photo for our own records. Some pairs stay locked for hours sometimes over a day!

Flashcard guide to how to lock correctly!

Building Follicles

Females will coninue to stay at the cool end of their tub whilst building follicles (the unfertiised eggs) - as they get closer to ovulation they will visibly swell and develop quite a paunch. Another tell tale sign that they are getting close to ovulating is if they really start to "glow" - their colour can brighten quite dramatically and they often look at their most stunning at this time. Here are some examples of glowing females .....

Ovulation

We keep pairing approximately once a month up until ovulation. Keep an eye on your females close to this time as ovulation only lasts around 24 hours so can be easily missed if you don't open the tub. If you do open the tub however you cannot mistake a full blown ovulation. The female develops a hard mid-body swelling and often "tail suck" where the tail is bent. This is the process of fertilisation in snakes where the stored sperm are released in the female in order to fertilise the fully developed follicles.  Once this has happened there is no need to introduce the male again as his job should be done.

Gravid

Once a female has ovulated she is referred to as being gravid. The time from ovulation to laying her eggs is usually around 50 days. She will normally go through a pre-lay shed around 2-3 weeks after ovulating and then it is generally around 30 days after the pre-lay shed until she lays. Whilst she is working on her eggs she well stay coiled at the warm end of the tub. 

Egg Positioning

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Just prior to laying the female will become more "toblerone" shaped with a v shape to her back. She will become restless and in the day or so prior to laying will often lie in a twisted way as she tries to line her eggs up ready to lay.

When she is about to lay she will lie in a coil with her tail in the centre.

Eggs!

Female royal pythons generally lay around 6 -8 eggs. Really large females can have clutches as large as 10 eggs. The female will generally coil around the eggs once she has finished. If she has laid any infertile eggs ("Slugs") she may roll them out to one side. But be careful to check it is really a "slug" if she does this as it is not always the case. If you turn the lights down and shine a torch on the eggs you will see a network of red veins if the egg is good. 

Setting up your egg box

Do this well in advance of your female laying and keep the box in the incubator so that it is warm and ready for when the eggs arrive. We use a 70/30 mix of perlite and vermiculite underneath a layer of egg crate which separates the eggs from the substrate. During incubation you are trying to achieve an air humidity of 90-100% - the easiest way we find to do this without risking drowning the eggs is to use a very wet mixture with the eggs separated from it by the egg crate (available from most pond suppliers). We use tubs with lids that seal but air the eggs once a week and then once a day a week before they are due to hatch. We place a temperature probe and a digital humidity gauge into each tub.  

Removing the eggs and looking after the female

Carefully uncoil the female from around the eggs - she may hiss and strike so try and be quick so that you stress her as little as possible. Pop her into a warm bath to remove the smell of the eggs. This helps her to get back to feeding sooner. Whilst she is bathing place the eggs into the egg box you have ready. If using egg crate you may need to stabilise the eggs to stop them rolling - pegs or plastic straws cut up are what we use (see pics). It is important that eggs can't roll around during incubation as that can separate the embryo from the yolk. Write up a label for the tub. Once the eggs are in the incubator you can focus on the female. While she is still soaking clean out her tub really well to remove the smell of the eggs and replace the substrate. This also helps to get her feeding sooner after laying.

Now leave to cook for 55 days at 89F :-)

I will be adding a section about incubators soon .....