Switching mates for female

[MartinW]

I'm thinking of experimenting a bit with breeding next year. If a male mates with a female and she lays eggs, and then I switch the male to a different one and mate the new one to the same female, will the female get rid of the sprem she might be holding from the original male and use the new sperm or is there no way of telling other than by seeing what the new offspring look like?

Martin

[Tim and Julie B]

Interesting question! I tried this myself last year out of curiosity. The results: all the females retained the sperm of the original male. I did this breeding hypo to hypo then switched to hypo/regular. All the eggs hatched out as hypos. No regulars. Well, I hope this helps ya out.

[HQReptiles]

We did this last year with Tremper Albinos. We switched near the end of the season from an Albino x Albino to Red Stripe x Albino, the resulting last two clutches of the season all hatched normal. The female had used the new mate for the eggs.

I have heard that a female will only use retained sperm if they need to, so if they have a mate they will use the 'fresh stuff'. Not sure how true that is but it worked in our case.

Matt.