retaining sperm

If a female can retain enough sperm from the first few days of breeding to lay fertile eggs for the rest of the breeding season, what happens if she is bred to a different male after the first few clutches? Does she only use the "stored" sperm if there is no fresh sperm available, so that the new male's sperm would supercede the old? Or would sperm from both males be used, making it difficult to determine parentage for the eggs laid after the second breeding? Is it unusual to breed a female to more than one male in a season? I've looked in every leo book and care sheet I can find, and haven't seen this mentioned anywhere. Thanks for any info!
Jax

This i wanted to know for a long time now...

I asked about this last year (in private emails to a breeder) when I had 1 male and all of my females were laying infertile eggs. I wanted to know if I switched males half way through the season if it would help produce fertile eggs. I found out later that my male was fine but anyway.....

here is basically the info I got:

Females retain sperm so if you breed to one male that sperm is retained and if you then breed her to a 2nd male the female would hold that males sperm as well so yes it would make it hard to know which male actually helped produce the babies.

It can also happen that the female does not retain enough sperm for whole season and may need to be mated again half way through the season, this usually happens more with first time breeders.

I was also told that the females can retain sperm for more than the one season and if you plan to breed to one male this year and one the next you would need to cool the female to kill off any retained sperm.

yes to sperm retention. AND I used to bust a gut in dog people and cat people that thought that a secondary breeding wouldn't influence the sperm count or breeding itself as to give way to the first insemination. ALWAYS ! In snakes though we talk of long term sperm storage/retention of depending on snake species from seasons to years. Viable sperm is viable sperm and in cases of the above supersedes the first insemination. There might be a slight window of the first viable sperm being active but I have never heard of it doing so with second breeding by another donor of sperm. ?

But we are talking lizards and it might be different........

I know someone who is hatching out Knobbies this year from an 04 breeding...

I would be interested in discovering the answer to this myself. Our only real way of finding this out (and be positive) would be DNA testing which would require a snippet of the tail tips... I am not aware of any other means of testing. Would a skin shed supply ample DNA?

how bout this: breed a pair of normals or whatever, and switch the male with a super form of any co-dom gene like hypo and see if you get some hypos. that would be interesting. my bet is that the sperm mixes and you get a mix of offspring from both. it should be like picking a father out of a hat tho.

Or you could use any of the recessive genes. Such as: have an albino x albino breeding, then 1/2 way through the season breed to a normal (not het). If you get 100% albinos, then you know the sperm from the first breeding was used throughout.

I believe Chris (Top Shelf) was complaining earlier this year about some breeders he bought only to find out later that they had "bastard" babies from the previous owner. Maybe he knows the answer to this riddle.

Originally Posted by A_Kendergirl

I believe Chris (Top Shelf) was complaining earlier this year about some breeders he bought only to find out later that they had "bastard" babies from the previous owner. Maybe he knows the answer to this riddle.

Riddle me this, riddle me that, I too remember Chris compaining about that.