OK so I am quite new to this whole Blog thing,but I am going to start blogging the work I am doing with the animals I am caring for on a daily basis. I have been fortunate to begin another chapter of my personal research and to have a 1.1 long term pair of adults to test some problematic breeding theories on. I will be adding new posts daily of all of my data and images of this project.

Ari

Tags: adults, animals, boelen, personal research, python

Fifth introduction: 11/25/09 8:45 am Female was placed in male’s enclosure. Mal e was tightly coiled and close to the door. Enclosure was misted lightly for 5 minutes both snakes and plants. Female explored bottom of a cage and then later male was observed courting as before on the ground. 11:39 female is on the bottom of cage and male is at the plateau basking .Temps are 90 and bottom of enclosure is 73.4 enclosure was lightly misted for several minutes. 11/25/09 Animals were allowed to reside in there individual cages and were not introduced for breeding today.

Tags: Ari Flagle, BOELENS, Boelens pythons, Morelia boeleni

Fourth introduction: 11/24/09 @ 10:30 am

Male was removed this time and placed in female’s enclosure in cool holding. I removed all of the décor except for one small flat pieced of cork bark under the basking site. Male went was put in to the right side of the cage and the female was on the far left side. Right away male went to the basking site and remained there for a bit. After about 30 min or so he began to tongue flick the paper she had been lying on. I had not changed the paper from yesterday it was not dirty at all but she had not made a mess of it as of yet. The pair showed no interest in breeding or courting in anyway.

 I removed the pair mid day and put them into the exhibit together. Within minutes the male was courting the female. @ 2:39pm observed the pair in confirmed copulation had mid body draped over large log and both snakes were elevated during copulation( arboreal copulation)only lasted a few minutes. Female disengaged breeding and then shortly after male engaged with another successful copulation. Hemi penis appeared very dark, purple and engorged when it was viewable. Snakes were separated as prior at end of the day.

Temperature reading of male snake after breeding was 83.5 within minutes of copulation and female snake was a temperature of 74. Temperature of enclosure cool area is 74.5 / mid range 78.5 / basking area 90.8

 

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Third introduction: 11/23/09 @ 10:28am

 

Upon my return from vacation I placed the female back into the male’s enclosure. (While I was gone animals were not fed nor misted in there enclosures for 7 days) I removed the male and allowed him soak in a large trash container then lightly misted the enclosure after removing old scat and left over sheds. I came back and observed male courting the female as before with vigorous spurring. He was draped over a portion of her body and the lower area of there bodies were close to the ground. Both animals were motionless except for the male spurring the female. Male and female are positioned in the left rear of the enclosure over a rock ledge. 12:45 both male and female are basking together at top of enclosure. Copulation could have taken place anytime, but I personally have not seen anything but the prior behavior as of yet. Male and female are at separate areas of the exhibit and appear to be done for the day. Female was removed from male’s exhibit @ 3:29pm and placed back into her enclosure in cool holding. Both snakes where then fed x2 large rats.

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