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Males too big to breed?

ms_terese

ms_terese

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I was having a conversation with a snake breeder that I believe has a lot of knowledge and experience, and the conversation turned to size of males. He doesn't feed his males as much as he does his females (we're talking about burmese here) because he said in his experience if males get too large they aren't interested in breeding.

Do any of you have opinions on whether this is accurate or not?
 
I only bred burms for a few years, and the males I used were in the 9-10 ft range. A friend of mine that bred larger pairs, for a longer period of time, did end up producing less consistently...but was it a matter of the male being less interested because of size, or a product of the age of the snakes?

That said, it seems to be frequently claimed that larger/heavier males tend to be less active breeders - and that is not restricted to burmese (I have heard it said about various python species, as well as boa sp and colubrids)
 
I have heard the same thing over the years. I heard that males that are fat or large get very lazy and uninterested in breeding(even males that have been proven in the past). It's very easy to make a burm in captivity obese, as they are geared to eat and eat, and in the wild food isnt as readily available as it is in captivity. So I do think there is probably some science behind this statement somewhere. Dan M.
 
I guess I've just never seen it. I feed my males and females equally, typically the females just grow more aggressively, but am wondering if I should slow down the feed schedule for my males?
 
Typically the major motivation for feeding the females more is the weight they lose after egg laying. The more weight they have going into the breeding season the better for them. With my rock pythons if my male eats 1 rat the females get 2-3 before he gets another one. Males are typically ready to breed earlier than females, so I try to balance it out a little bit more myself, but I am sure there are as many opinions out there as there are people working with pythons. I find 7-10 foot male burms/rocks seem to breed best from what I've seen, but thats limited numbers. If what you are doing is working for you, I see no need to change it, but if you think you could see better results, experiment a bit and slow down the males feeding. For instance lets say you were feeding both male and females burms 1 rabbit every 2 weeks. Keep the female where she is at, but feed the male every three weeks as opposed to two, or just give him a smaller meal than hers and such. See what works for you. Good luck, Dan M.
 
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