Holdbacks & Growing Your Collection

Since this is my 5th year of breeding, I have been lucky enough to hit on a few nice clutches (well for me they are anyway). I held on to 4 hatchlings total (2 male and 2 female). When I hold back males, I hold back supers or multi-gene hatchlings that will be replacing their fathers (this year jigsaw replaces pinstripe and silver streak will eventually replace my black pewter as I am attempting my black pewter to pewter pairing again next year). As for females, it depends on what projects we are working on. Or if the female just blows me away I will keep her. The females I kept this year are a pastel enchi and a nice little bee which I plan on working into several projects down the line with a new morph that should be arriving Wednesday :D

I'd fall into the category of holding back 2 of the same gene male. Just because I'm planning my breeding on a project level with very specific desired outcomes. I currently have only 4 projects if you can call them that. The only purpose of one of them is to crank out the highest quality of a particular line of animal while line breeding for my own visual tastes. I'm extremely hopeful and excited about that particular projects potential for me especially starting out! It's because of the specificity of my desired outcomes that for most projects a standard backup male wouldn't be sufficient. I currently only have around 30 Ball Pythons and the 4 projects but as time goes on and I get what I consider to be a large collection then I might have enough mobility to allow for another back up male of other genetics move into a different slot. As Corey has pointed out you don't have to keep him forever and from my experience you can tell the problem snakes fairly early although I do not have experience with breeding just feeding.

OH BTW Alan... I h8 u... How many snakes have you picked up this year... with 4 months in the year left... lol Jelly my friend Jelly...

LOL I'm also single and have way too much time on my hands. Plus I'm paying for it big time! Imagine my weekly rat bill until I get these suckers breeding! At least you've managed to get some rats to produce, mine just eat and drink a ton! I'm pretty sure at least one should have got pregnant and dropped by now. Dang.

At ~150g I have pretty much determined most of my holdbacks out of the doubles of the same morph I have produced :gj:

I like that this thread has "risen to the top" now that more people are hatching clutches. Thanks for the additional insight, everyone!

We usually plan what we want to keep from each clutch - including sex ;). Mostly we are keeping females that are best looking examples of the morphs / combos or males that we want to use in the future replacing it's dad etc. :).