Earliest age for breeding

[Hooky87]

I would like to know what peoples experiences are of the youngest age of breeding in fire salamanders, i know it is normally 3 to 4 years but i have some young sals that are between 3 1/2 to 4 inch long that are showing signs of being male which made me think has breeding before 3 years ever happend.
Cheers

Matt

 

[Azhael]

Bare in mind that males almost always reach maturity earlier than females. Just because the males are nearing adulthood, it doesn´t mean the females are going to be ready soon.
In addition, allowing a young female to breed may be detrimental to her health and development.

 

[benw]

.
In addition, allowing a young female to breed may be detrimental to her health and development.

I totally agree, it can put the female through a lot of stress, but having said that it happens in the wild, but we have no control over that.......

I have had a female breed probably too young, and the larvae were very small, although they did survive, but there were a lot of unfertilised eggs, and the female did need a bit of tlc after.

i think a good benchmark age would be about 5 years old for most salamandra, and maybe 7 or so for the alpine speces

 

[tdimler]

I have quite a few CB 2005 animals which I think will need another year to mature. I have heard of animals breeding at 3 years but I find this hard to imagine. I can second the fact the spawns of young females usually have a low survivability. Sometimes I wish they would grow up faster!

Travis

 

[inshi]

Hello,

I´ve lost a bernardezi after breeding at the age of 2 1/2 (!) - I never expected, they bred this early, especially if you keep in mind they are giving birth to fully developed salamanders. I think it was too early for the female to cope with...

Ingo