Is the price right?

I have an opportunity to purchase a 1.1 pair of normals that are ready to breed now for $200. Do you think this is a good price? I want to try my hand at breeding and my male is a year away from breeding age and I have no female. Thanks for the input...

Jamie

That price actually sounds too good to be true. This time of year breedable females alone are selling for $250 - $700 depending on their size. Make sure you get a verifiable weight on the female that is above 1500 grams before you commit. Lots of people are selling 900 - 1200 gram females as "breedable" and it's just not going to happen.

Good luck!

-adam

Thanks Adam! I will check them out and definitely weigh the female. How many eggs could I expect in a first clutch?

the number of eggs can depend on the size of the snake. $200 sounds reasonable for a pair but as mentioned my first guess without seeing them would be to think they are a young pair. Never hurts to have the facts, actual weight and possibly proving the sexes of each animal.

So I got them today. The male is around 4+ feet and thick (weighs around 1.7 lbs). The female is 4 years old, never been bred, weighs over 3 lbs (around 1700 grams). I watched them get probed and they are definitely male and female. They are now in separate rubbermaids and I am going to get to work on fattening the female up for a few weeks and then cooling them down in preparation for what I hope is my first breeding!

Sounds like you got a great deal there. Adult females are nearly worth their weight in gold, it seems!

Thanks! I am really psyched to start my breeding project! I have one question for anyone who has done it before. During cooling, do you have cool both the warm side and the ambient? The ambient will be difficult to cool considering they are in rubbermaids. Also, does anyone have a problem with the humidity being too high for BPs in rubbermaids? I notice it is staying around 65. I have the water on the opposite side of the heating pad and they are on Aspen. Thanks!

Jamie

For breeding I let my ambient temps get down to about 77 degrees at their lowest point with the hot spot getting down as low as 83 - 85. (From a usual 82 ambient and 94 hot spot). This is what works for me, but a lot of people also have success doing it differently.

To solve the getting a lower ambient and humidity problem in your rubbermaids, try making more holes on the cool side. Kill two birds with one stone.

Hope this helps.

-adam

Adam,

Do you only cool at night and then go back to regular temps during the day? There seems to be a lot of different methods for cooling. By the way, just by moving the accurite away from the water bowl, I am getting a more accurate reading. Humidity is around 63-67. I just turned on a fan in the room to move air around and it seems to help as well.

Yes, just at night ... Everything comes back to normal during the day. I start with about a 12 hour cycle in the middle of October and get to about a 15 - 16 hour cycle in January and then start heading back to 12.

I also decrease the ambient humidity in my rooms and shorten my light cycles. I don't know if it helps, but its what I've always done and my snakes all breed like nuts!

-adam

hmmmm....why was my normal adult (boy i think) so cheap? he was only 50 bucks and i think he's pretty darn attractive

price all depends on where you get your snake, who you get it from and what time of year it is. prices are always lower at shows and sometimes during non-breeding times.

oh.
i got him at the east bay vivarium which is a reptile/invertabrate pet store, in february. i think they get alot of people dumping off old pets to them and wanting no money. that's probably what he was, but i love him to death.

One can never have enough females, since one male can be bred with several females. Males on the other hand, are much less in demand. Normal females are as expensive as they are because they can be bred with dominant/codominant/incomplete dominant males and produce valuable offspring. Male normals on the other hand are pretty much worthless for morph breeding purposes. Even for people who breed normals, they will generally have more than enough males already and will always have some extra to get rid of. Nobody would bother to breed a normal male to a dominant/codominant/incomplete dominant female however, as they can breed that female to a different morph for a nice cross, another het of the same morph to produce a super, or just to guarantee a higher percentage of morph offspring.

However, although male normals may not have much investment value, they make fantastic pets. If it weren't for so many imported captive hatched/wild caught, male normals would be worth a lot more. They stay smaller, require less feeding, and are just as tame and nicely coloured.