When will my male be ready?

I have a male that I got this season to replace a breeder that died a couple years ago, right now he is at just over 200g. I have 4 females that are waiting on him to breed with (07 2600g, 08 1200g, 08 1200g, 09 1200g). He has a very good feeding response so I wanted to know how long until he should be ready to breed with the females?

Oh man, he's pretty small for wanting to breed him this year. Sometimes you can get them to breed between 350-400 grams, but that's not terribly common. A lot of males like to be 500 grams before they start wanting to do anything. I'm guessing that he's also pretty young, so my opinion would be that he will be ready to breed by next season (fall of 2012). He's also pretty small to be breeding 3 females, that's a lot of stress on a young/small male.

Yes he is very young, I was planning on buying a breeder male for this season to breed with the females until the little guy is ready but recently I've been considering just having the girls wait til hes ready. Does holding back females from breeding allow them to pack on more weight for the next season than if they were bred and produced eggs?

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Originally Posted by Kenj620

Yes he is very young, I was planning on buying a breeder male for this season to breed with the females until the little guy is ready but recently I've been considering just having the girls wait til hes ready. Does holding back females from breeding allow them to pack on more weight for the next season than if they were bred and produced eggs?

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I think you'll have to wait till next season. I was trying to get one of my '11 males up to weight to breed back to his mom, but I've only got him up to 300 grams, so I'll have to wait till next year to breed him to mom. It will definitely give them time to pack on some more weight. Females lose almost half of their body weight from breeding/laying eggs so you have a lot of weight to get back on them before you attempt to breed again.