How Good of an Investment are Normal Females?

Hey there, I'm Shey! It's my first post, but I plan to be a lot more active here now that I'm realizing my dreams. I've been wildly passionate about snakes for a few years and am just getting started on a collection to breed in a couple/few years. I'm almost ready, and already making connections - and already getting offered lots of snakes!

I've already got a fire female that needs growing up, a lesserxspider male who's almost ready to go and a single normal female (who was actually a WC from a pet store but has been in captivity and doing well for 7 or 8 years and is huge and healthy, just needs an internal parasite check before letting her near the CBs), but not breeding him yet because I don't have a hatchling rack or incubator. A buddy of mine is switching from BP's to Carpets and I'm going to buy his nice mojave female too who is about halfway to breeding size. My goal in the near future is a variety of high-white spider combos (so I'll be going to get a calico and pastel in my collection soon too) and blue and black eyed leucys.

So would it do me any good to take him up on his offer of two perfect super size normal females for $100? I know they can't take me up on the morph ladder, but what benefits are there to having some normal females in store, besides large clutch sizes and some quantity of less valuable snakes (not always a pro, though.)

Sorry for the long post - I look forward to your advice, guys!

You certainly take your chances at having clutches with lots of normal babies, but that isn't a bad thing if you haven't bred before. Having normal females can increase volume well if you have a 2 gene male. Also useful for proving out male breeders. It's good practice to go ahead and try to get a clutch out before you start breeding higher end double/triple gene babies with your other females. Normal babies can sometimes be sold wholesale to pet shops or to friends for cheap. Check your local craigslist for a broken mini-fridge and get to working on that incubator.

Well, a normal can still produce eggs.

When I started out I got 1 triple male, and a dozen normal females.

Normal females help you to get your morph females. If you have a strict hold back plan and you keep female morphs to raise up, its the cheapest way to get morph females into your collection. When they start breeding replace the normals...

Normal females are very valuable. I have normals that I really love cause they produce 9-11 eggs almost every year and when you have double supers and super combo males it's nice to have those females that can be your bread an butter producers for things like bumble bees, Blast's ect. I try and save my morph females for producing hold backs and really one off stuff. Right now I've got about 50 normal females that are breeders or up coming breeders.

They have value I think more with newer/high demand genes. eg you want to produce a ton to get ahead with your projects.

Personally, if I was just starting out, I'd save up a little more $$ and invest in some morph females; even basic females such pastel or yb are great to start out with. You can get some nice combos. Plus you have to have the morph females to make the supers, might as well as start out with them IMO.

They certainly have value. For me personally, I'm trying to cut back on my normal female stock because I want to keep a manageable number of snakes. Maybe some day I'll have the room/time for a whole lot more, but right now I'm trying to the head count on the lower end.

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Originally Posted by SlitherinSisters

They certainly have value. For me personally, I'm trying to cut back on my normal female stock because I want to keep a manageable number of snakes. Maybe some day I'll have the room/time for a whole lot more, but right now I'm trying to the head count on the lower end.

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Another good point is room considerations. If you have lots of room, then they can make sense. But if you can only house 4 adults, I'd suggest a morph is a better investment.

normal females are a good way to cheaply drive up the amount of clutches and eggs. whats nice is that you can get older, big proven breeder females rather cheaply.

but of course morphs are better. there is nothing 20 normal females can do that 20 single, double and triple gene females cannot do.

and if one wants to get into a super expensive project, i would prefer to have nice combo females ready before taking the economic plunge. if you buy a GHI, you will want more than clutches of normals and GHIs, you want some combos.

then there are two things normal females cannot do, never ever, and that is producing supers or combos with supers (BEL, killerbee, etc), and producing visual recessives.

that being said, nice big females for 100 each still sounds like a good deal, they will be helpful until morph females are raised up and breeding and producing large clutches.

I value our normal female breeders very highly. We use them along side our morph females for different projects. As mentioned earlier, it is a cheap way to get morph babies when you have a morph male x normal female. Keep back the girls and grow them up and either replace the normal female or use both. We also use our proven normal girls with our dinker males to see if anything interesting proves out. When first starting to breed, this can be very helpful! Good luck!