Mr. Lipinski: If you wish for us to communicate with you please start refering to us by one of our real names not one of your corruptions of our name. We are not the killzenferrets nor zenists. bill, diane, mr killian or mrs. killian are fine ways to address us. This is getting quite tedious. Bill G.: perhaps you really ought to think about whether such rude informality with names is a form of flaming. In answer to the query. In a jills first pregnancy of the year she will most probably have a larger litter than in her second. This is quite well established. It is independant statistically of the males involved in our experience. If instead of having a litter at her first estrus she instead has a false pregnancy on her first estrus the effect on the size of a litter from her second estrus is the same. The specifics of the phenomenon can be discussed in "shorthand" as saying she has fewer eggs available for secondary or tertiary litters. Males do seem less interested in breeding later in the season but we are not being "short-sighted" if we have a different opinion or have had different experiences than you have or had. Perhaps you should contact other breeders if you doubt us. This well known phenomanon is even disussed to some extent although not directly involving breeding to a vasectomized hob in the Fox book "The Biology and diseases of the Ferret". If it was handy we'd cite pages explicitly. This is well known by the reputable breeders we work with and the ranchers we've talked to. A related phenomenon is the small number of ferrets at ranches that can successfully have second litters and the even smaller percentage that can have a third under the highly controlled care of Marshall Farms. Dr. Judi Bell is a source of this information through direct conversation on the phone. We do not make this all up on our own but rather discuss ferrets and their husbandry with those that have been breeding, some even for decades. Sally Heber (AFA president), Vickie McKimmey (holder of numerous positions in numerous ferret organizations) and Georgia Bailey (chair of both the AFA judges committe and breeders committee) are among those who have expressed this belief. We did not refer to the time of year that estrus occurs. We referred to the number of previous estrus cycles in a given "year" - not calendar year based on our twelve months but the serial sequence number from the first estrus after the non-breeding season. If you would use the same language to refer to the various aspects of ferrets as the rest of us breeders we and other readers would have a better time understanding you and you would have a better time understanding us. bill and diane killian zen and the art of ferrets http://www.zenferret.com/ mailto:[log in to unmask] [Posted in FML issue 2133]