Breeding

[cchardwick]

I'm actually at the point where I'm going to breed for the first time this year, I'm up to 28 snakes, about a dozen ball python females will be breedable this year. One thing to keep in mind as you build your breeding stock, one male can mate with 4-5 females. I initially made the mistake of getting one male and one female in pairs, then realized I didn't need that many males.

For me it's best to get high end males and cheaper females, even a normal female can be valuable if you breed it to a five or six gene male and give you a huge variety of offspring. I just picked up a few huge normal / het females to boost my production in my first year.

I was actually just laid off from work due to a buyout and I'm hoping I can survive this next year breeding various animals here at the farm (snakes / rats / mice / ducks / puppies / cattle, etc..) I actually started with an ARS rack system for rats and mice and have been selling the extra to a local snake breeder. Then I moved up to trading some rats and mice for some nice female ball pythons. I also bought coconut husk by the pallet and trade it along with the rats and mice for more snakes. If you plan along the way there's ways to make money as you go and have the hobby pay for itself. Once you get a rack of hatchlings to sell you'll be able to get some money coming in to pay the bills and to expand if you want to. My end goal is to have about 40 female ball pythons and about 10 males. Should give me about 280 babies per year on average, should be a good supplemental income to the farm.

Eventually I'll dump the big normal / low end females and upgrade my collection (maybe sell them cheap to someone starting out), but if you want to jump start it you can follow suit and get a big cheap female (over 1500 grams) that's ready to breed and a smaller ~ 500 gram high end male and give it a shot. I picked up a 3500 gram normal het caramel albino for a hundred bucks! And I'm planning on buying two large females (about 2500 grams) from the guy that buys my rats, a normal and a pinstripe, both females ready to breed for $100 each. I have the perfect high end male to breed with them.

And you don't need high end equipment to start, you can fabricate an incubator for a couple hundred bucks and use Tupperware with holes for hatchling snake tubs. Once you sell the hatchlings you can use that money to upgrade things.

Also, I'd recommend visiting this forum often and ask a lot of questions. I've been doing this for a couple years now and even this week I learned some valuable info from this site.

[Craiga 01453]

I have to agree with the others here. I also get that it was probably just a generalized question and you don't plan on breeding any time in the immediate future. But yeah, breeding is a lot more involved than buying a few snakes, pairing them up and "poof" cute little baby BPs. I'm years away from ready (but have no real plans to breed) and I've got a few years experience keeping snakes, have my own house, I'm financially secure and 38 years old.

The best advice I can give you right now is read, study and learn all about your new snake. Forget about breeding for at LEAST long enough to have years of experience, financial security and your own place.

Breeding isn't all fun and cute baby snakes. There are some negatives that come with breeding.
When do you cull an animal with a birth defect? Would you be able to physically do that to an animal?
What about the inevitable vet visits? Those costs add up quickly.

Anyway, focus on your one snake for now, put some money aside for vet visits, etc...
Learn, learn, learn my young friend...