None of my reptiles are ready to breed yet and I may not breed them but here's an idea I've been kicking around that somebody may find interesting or I may just be really off base:

Having bred tropical fish for umpteen years and from reading about reptiles it's pretty obvious that they get seasonal environmental cues about when it's time to reproduce (duh!). Further reading indicates that the central dogma about cooling is not applicable to all reptiles so I got this idea partially from talking to my friend who wants to breed his rainbow boas. Anyway the idea is that there must be a way to get on the net and look up the weather patterns for the area that the herp you want to breed is from. You could look at the current conditions and the past trends (you could even analyze them mathematically if you were that serious) and recreate an appropriate climatic situation for your animals rather than the very generalized cooling that it seems many breeders practice. I'd try something like this if I were trying to breed any of my animals. Any input?

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Sounds like a brilliant idea, but perhaps hard work. I don't think we'd have time to do that for all of our reptiles, and the general cooling seems to work well for certain species.

This year we are "cooling" our bearded dragons, collared lizards, corn snakes and western hognoses. We also intend to breed our dumerils boas, and some of the other snakes are having a "winter period" due to their voluntary fasting, but for the boids we are simply reproducing a natural photoperiod and decreasing temps by only a few degrees, as they do not do well with cooling, as colubrids do.

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"If you know everything you may as well blow your brains out because the reason for existence is to learn more everyday." - Mark O'Shea, 2004

I spent hours and hours looking for this chart. I try to follow it as closely as possible. I use it for my cresteds which are from the southern portion of new caledonia, so I try to keep the temps a few degrees below. Since new caledonia is in the southern hemisphere their winter is our summer, so our January is their July. It worked great for cooling them last year, I also adjust the lights accordingly (summer longer days, winter shorter days).
Now that Im a little more experienced I want to see if the cooling period goes as smooth as I thought it did last year. My female is going to lay one more clutch in about 30 days, then Im reducing the food, about a ten hour photoperiod, and turning the fans on, which makes it hard to keep the humidity up.

Heather check out www.weatherunderground.com

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Merlin,
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