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Ultrasound Info
These ultrasound images were recorded by a SIUI-3300V. Very few breeders are able to discernibly detect follicles at this stage via palpation, but with an ultrasound, you can clearly see two of the female's follicles side by side just below the backbone with relatively little effort, moreover, you can also instantly see the quality and overall health of the follicles, which palpation alone could never illuminate. These follicles are nice, crisp and clean, denoting a high grade of health, and the best chance at viability. In other words: this female is ripe and ready to be paired!
Suprisingly, we have found that ball python females will often reach this phase of follicular development without any temperature or daylight fluctuations whatsoever, and are often optimally ready to breed in the high summer months of July and August!
Since all SIUI machines have a centimeter grid display along the x and y axis, it is relatively easy to note the size of these follicles at a glance: right around 2 centimeters. We feel this is the optimal time to pair females with males, and have been able to consistently produce over a dozen clutches a year from individual males by choosing females based of follicle quality, size, and development stage. We can also selectively pick the females that have a larger number of follicles, and pair those with the more valuable males to get more eggs per clutch out of key males. Since we can pinpoint the optimal time to breed, we are able to produce far more clutches with far fewer lockups, and average just under two lock ups a clutch. Last year we got 16 clutches from a single two year old male, and this year we are pushing the possibility of getting 20+ clutches from a single 18 month old male!
In this next image you can see a number of follicles of many different shapes and sizes, ranging from 0.5 centimeters to 1.25 centimeters. Unbeknownst to many breeders, varying follicle sizes are extremely common, and those without an ultrasound are all but clueless to the effects breeding too early can have on ultimate clutch size in these types of cases. Over the years we have noticed that slower developing follicles under .5 centimeters will be quickly left in the dust, and re-absorbed in the wake of more mature 2+ centimeter follicles, if breeding takes place too early before the different sized follicles get a chance to "get set," at the "starting line." By waiting until more of the trailing follicles have a chance to "catch up," to the size of the older, more mature follicles, you can often get an extra two to five more eggs than you would have otherwise. This particular female is a 2800 gram 100% Double Heterozygous Lavender-Clown virgin. By giving the trailing follicles slightly more time to advance, we increased our chances of having a larger clutch, which for this particular female bred to a lavender male, could be huge for us!
Married to a professional echo cardiographer, and having a personal background in zoology, veterinary care and respiratory therapy, Grant Whitmer Jr. had a unique background supporting his attempt to master ultrasound technology with regard to python regius propagation.
Grant Whitmer Jr. has been using an ultrasound extensively since 2004 and has become one of the most successful implementors of ultrasound technology with regard to amateur reptile propagation in the world!
Like many who start, big bucks were forked out for some young, unproven codom breeder males that were really hot at the time. A large army of adult females was procured from pet stores, local classifieds in the newspaper etc. to breed to them.
At first, the pairings resulted in no lockups. All breeders know how frustrating it is when a young male you have a lot into simply will not breed. Like many who just start out, we wondered if the females we were pairing up with young, inexperienced males were even ready to breed. Was it the male's fault or the female's fault no one was breeding? Was it just too early? By late October, we were feeling for follicles via hand palpation, but really could not tell for sure if what we were feeling was follicles or something else. Looking back, realizing how clueless, naive and inexperienced we were, it is easy to laugh, but at the time, with so much time and money invested, we were willing to do almost anything for some kind of peace of mind that we were giving ourself the best chance at success.
After a few weeks passed by with no lock ups, we were starting to worry until finally, for the first time, we observed one of our males locked up with a large female. Eventually, all the males started locking up as the season progressed, and it didn't take long before we were starting to do the age old "counting snakes before their hatched" routine. Naturally, all the females in good flesh with plenty of fat reserves that bred 6 or more times would eventually ovulate and lay 6-10 eggs right? WRONG!
We eventually had a female start acting strange so we took her to a vet. He spent a long time examining her, palpating her and running up a juicy bill, pumping her full of antibiotics and drugs. He said she was sick and needed the heat turned up, regular antibiotics administered, etc. The next day, she laid a clutch of 9 eggs that died within days. That experience taught us a lot, and we decided to take matters into our own hands.
When we finally got an ultrasound midway through the breeding season of '04, we were worried that we might have wasted money on a machine that might not work on ball pythons, or that the probe would be the wrong type, or that we would not be able to differentiate follicles from all the other stuff inside the female's abdomen, or that we would be intimidated by all the buttons and stuff on the ultrasound and how they would relate to ultra sounding snakes.
Without anyone's help to demonstrate proper technique as far as how to hold and manipulate the female, as well as probe and dial in the machine, it did take some time to finally be able to locate the follicles and/or determine the lack thereof with accuracy. Imagine our chagrin finding out that a large number of big, fat, heavy females we had been breeding over and over didn't even have any follicles at all! We also observed that many of the smaller females actually had more follicles than the larger ones, and we were breeding the more valuable males to females with fewer follicles in many cases! One 4000+ gram female only had 3 good follicles, while several 1900 gram females had 9 or more. We also were able to observe that many of the females we were breeding already had 4+ centimeter follicles. We would eventually discover that breeding females with follicles at this stage so close to ovulation was essentially a waste of a lockup, especially when there were plenty of other females waiting to be bred for the first time.
Eventually it was discovered that there was a correlation between follicular development and lockups, and the optimal stages of development were eventually identified to achieve maximum results. With 4 years of data from over 100 adult females, it became possible to get up to 16 clutches from one 2 year old male, and we are convinced this would be almost impossible without the aid of ultrasound.
In the breeding season of '07-'08 the Whitmers are working on an exhaustive documentary examining their understanding of the power of using follicular development tracking as a tool to increase breeding success. Essentially, the entire cycle of hidden follicular development will be showcased via ultrasound for all to see for the first time. Anyone who has ever wondered about what really goes on inside the female ball python's body during cycling will be fascinated by the video.
If you are interested in purchasing an ultrasound unit to help catapult your breeding efforts to the next level, or have questions, please click on the "Ultrasounds For Sale" link on the right side of this page to learn more.
