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Reproduction of Diamond Pythons
Breeding diamond pythons is very simple. As mentioned earlier, I think I was the first person to breed them successfully in captivity, almost twenty years ago. After frustrating myself for a few years, I decided to study their environment a lot more, and came up with the outlines for feeding, temperature, humidity and photocycling indicated throughout this article. They are the rules of the road for diamond python breeding. Follow them and you should get fertile eggs. Violate them and you’ll most likely get nothing. It’s that simple.
In order to make it very simple, I’ll outline what I do the breed diamonds. I’m sure these schedules can be varied somewhat and still result in fertile breedings, as evidenced by breeders other than myself that usually have eggs up to two months earlier than I! But I do what works for me, and as long as my eggs are fertile, I stick with it.
Diamonds probably lay eggs every third year in the wild. It’s most likely related to a female’s ability to build body mass. Captive diamonds have done well for me by giving the female, no matter how good she looks, a year off between breedings. Those who have bred diamonds repeatedly, without time off, oftentimes either lose their animals or go through years of non productivity - stark testament that the animal needs time off. Breed your female every year and you’re asking for trouble.
Remove the snakes from the hibernation boxes by early to mid March. I take my animals out at night, place them in the darkness of their cages, and leave them alone. The snakes will be between 50-60 degrees, and the room should be around 75, with a basking light coming on the next morning - which allows them to get as warm as they want. Red 250 watt heat lamps warm the basking area to around 100 degrees. At this temperature the snakes will bask for an hour or so and retreat to the hide box. After a week of this pattern, it’s all right to raise the temperatures to the high seventies to low eighties at night, and the middle eighties during the day, with the basking area still available. As mentioned, it’s important to make sure the snake can cool off if it wants, and to that end I always provide large cages with thermal gradients available for the animals. Typically, they can find places in their cages where the temperature is near 70 degrees, which they seem to prefer at certain times. Large, long cages with hot and cold ends are the best way to achieve these gradients.
Within a week to a month, after the female has had a small meal or two and shed, it’s usually time for breeding. Quite often the male will begin pacing his cage, assumedly because he smells the pheromones of the female, who should be reproductively ready. I ultrasound my females at this time and usually their follicles are lined out, and approximately just over one (1) cm in diameter. Introduce the male to the female at this time. Introducing the female to the male oftentimes results in a female exploring the new cage while the male is frantically trying to breed. Introduce him to her, and he won’t be very concerned with the new cage, believe me! Many of my cages have trap doors between the pairs, and I simply open it and the male quickly scoots over to the female.
Carpet pythons often exhibit combat behavior, which led many early diamond breeders to assume the same would be true of diamonds. To the best of my knowledge combating has never been observed in wild or captive diamonds. This isn’t to say that having two males in the cage isn’t a good thing, for I have noticed more frequent breedings when two males are present. But actual combat simply doesn’t seem to occur in this species. They’re lovers, not fighters, one could assume...
Breeding usually lasts four to six weeks, when the males lose interest in the females they should be separated. Shortly afterwards the males usually resume feeding, making their feeding year generally a May through October affair, one meal every few weeks. Keep them slim and a little hungry and you’ll have healthy, active, virile breeder males. Fatten them if you prefer duds.
Females oftentimes feed right up to egg laying. I will let them feed, but reduce the meal size and frequency. If she’s healthy she shouldn’t need any food, but limited feeding doesn’t hurt the egg production/fertility and it does seem to help the females recover after laying if they have been fed beforehand.
Approximately two months after breeding, and 21 to 28 days after shedding, the female will grace you will 15 - 30 eggs, although larger clutches have been recorded. My experience with many diamond breedings has been a maximum clutch size of 21, and the smallest being 11. I’d have to carefully inspect diamonds laying larger clutches, suspecting hybridization with the more prolific carpet python. Not being a fan of cross breeding, consider it fair warning that integration with carpet pythons makes anything but the most perfect specimens of diamond python suspect. Look for pure colors - gold, white, black and no browns, banding, patches, or striping. Perfect little rosettes with black and white or black and gold colors usually assures you’ve got the real thing. It also helps to get your animals from a reputable breeder.
Their eggs can be hatched like any python egg - high humidity and somewhere around 89 degrees Fahrenheit. Although I’ve never allowed a female to incubate the eggs herself, this year I have two females with which I intend to let nature take it’s course. It’s fun to weigh eggs weekly and record their growth, but somehow I’ve come to feel it is the females right to hatch her own eggs
This care sheet is Copyright of Stan Chiras and can be found at http://sthcoastherpsociety.bizland.com/diamondpaper.chtml