Question on females retaining sperm for up to 3 years

GreenCountryHerp

GreenCountryHerp

Danny Jenkins
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I have heard that female bps can carry viable sperm for up to 3 years. If this is true how do people know 100% that their hets are true hets. For example: you have a female mojave that you breed to a male mojave. The next year you breed her to an albino. When the eggs hatch you will most likely get mojaves and normals. How would you know that the sperm wasn't from the male mojave that you bred her to the year before? If it was the male mojave sperm that fertilized the eggs than the hatchlings wouldn't be het for albino would they?

I have been throwing this around in my mind for awhile and I thought I would pick everyones brains and see if I can get some other opinions on this.
 
I was thinking about this few days ago and was gonna post it but forgot I'm curious as to what others have to say also :)
 
I can only speak of my personal experience. Last year I was breeding a spider female to a cinnie male early in the season. They locked a couple of times, then he showed no further interest in her. After about 2 months with no breeding or signs of ovulation I put the spider together with my male albino, hoping to at least hit on some spiders het for albino. About a month or two afterwards she went off feed and shortly after ovulated. When the eggs came I was expecting the eggs would be het albino, mainly because the albino male was a much stronger breeder then the cinnie and their breeding was much closer to the actual ovulation. Well out of 6 eggs, one was infertile, 2 were normals, 1 was a spider, and 2 were cinnabees. So apparently she retained the sperm from those first few locks and all the pairings with the albino were irrelivant. As far as how long a snake will retain sperm and so forth, i have no personal knowledge to share. ( P.S. the albino male was a proven breeder )
 
edenspets said:
Well out of 6 eggs, one was infertile, 2 were normals, 1 was a spider, and 2 were cinnabees. So apparently she retained the sperm from those first few locks and all the pairings with the albino were irrelivant.
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It's unlikely but possible the 2 normals are het albino's.

When playing with recessives anything that doesn't go this year will be shot again by the same male the following season just to be 100% sure the offspring are truly hets :)
 
edenspets said:
Well out of 6 eggs, one was infertile, 2 were normals, 1 was a spider, and 2 were cinnabees. So apparently she retained the sperm from those first few locks and all the pairings with the albino were irrelivant.
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It's unlikely but possible the 2 normals are het albino's.

When playing with recessive genes, anything that doesn't go this year will be shot again by the same male the following season just to be 100% sure the offspring are 100% hets :)
 
If the female is a visual recessive, albino/ghost/pied then all of her hatchlings are 100% hets.
 
Forgot to mention that personally I would breed a male recessive to a virgin female only just to be sure that I have 100% hets otherwise I wont take the chance.
 
Jben-if your male is homozygous (i.e. visual) then you can breed him to whatever you want and the offspring will be 100% hets. But you can't breed a pied male and a pastel male to the same female, for example. You wouldn't know if the normal looking babies were het pied.

One interesting fact is that you can breed, say, a pied male and a super pastel male to the same normal female. If the babies come out normal looking, they are het pied. Otherwise, they are pastel.

I haven't heard of a big breeder that worries too much about sperm retention from year to year. Hopefully it's rare.
 
I agree with not taking chances. Last year, the only recessive x normal pairing I did was with a virgin normal so that I could put my name on those hets and not worry that it could ever come back on me. This year I'm doing the same. This time with male hypo mojo x mojo virgin.
 
I agree with not taking chances on the recessives myself, but there are people out there who are probably unknowingly selling snakes as hets that aren't hets at all. It is an interesting theory and probably the reason some peoples hets never prove out. I was just brainstorming, I know the ways you can avoid this happening I just wanted to throw the idea out there.
 
nevohraalnavnoj said:
I haven't heard of a big breeder that worries too much about sperm retention from year to year. Hopefully it's rare.
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There are three big time breeders out there that state on the websites that the females can retain 2 plus years. I don't want to put there names on this forum, but I just wanted to let you know they are aware of it. The big breeders probably don't take the chances a smaller breeder would because they have a larger breeding stock.
 
greencountryreps said:
I agree with not taking chances on the recessives myself, but there are people out there who are probably unknowingly selling snakes as hets that aren't hets at all. It is an interesting theory and probably the reason some peoples hets never prove out. I was just brainstorming, I know the ways you can avoid this happening I just wanted to throw the idea out there.
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I've heard of it being retained for 2 years. I'd like to know if there is a known time-limit, too, but I would think that with nature there's always some kind of chance, hence my going out of my way to NOT take chances where my name will be involved.
 
This is exactly the reason why when I get into recessives I will only do it this way:
The male being the homozygous
The females being the codom or dom hets (pastel het or spider het as an example)
When I get into the recessive gene I will buy the male and three females to pair him with. Within time I will get more females for the male but those females will only and I mean ONLY ever breed with that male. And if I back up the breeding it will be a male with the same recessive gene in him, like butter het or a lesser het, etc.

This way its guaranteed that I'm not mixing recessives unless its wanted (recessive x recessive)


That's the way I figured I would do things.
 
wikidkitty said:
This is exactly the reason why when I get into recessives I will only do it this way:
The male being the homozygous
The females being the codom or dom hets (pastel het or spider het as an example)
When I get into the recessive gene I will buy the male and three females to pair him with. Within time I will get more females for the male but those females will only and I mean ONLY ever breed with that male. And if I back up the breeding it will be a male with the same recessive gene in him, like butter het or a lesser het, etc.

This way its guaranteed that I'm not mixing recessives unless its wanted (recessive x recessive)


That's the way I figured I would do things.
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Exactly what me and Aaron are doing. We will have a whole separate group for certain recessives to be sure. :yesnod:
 
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