Quote Originally Posted by JMoriarty View Post
Thank you guys for all your input. I decided to hold off on getting the males (unless I suddenly come into some money or something ). I am getting the cinnamon female. I'll be picking her up tomorrow, late morning or early afternoon.

I don't know what "goal" morph I have. Many are freaking awesome! At this point, I'm wanting to just play around with it and see what I get. I did find someone who has a supposed het ghost het atomic female for $100, but I don't know that I trust it, as it looks like a normal to me.
Even if you suddenly come into money, I think you'll be better off saving it and getting your double or triple gene male later. Your female will need time to grow and prices keep coming down. In the fall of 2008 I thought I just had to get a pair of Mojaves, so I bought my pair and my female just got up to weight for the 2011-2012 season. I could have bought only the female and saved a year and a half or even 2 years of feeding and cleaning for the male if I had only bought the female in 2008. I also made the mistake of buying a couple of normal females. I thought that the more females I could breed my male to, the better, and I could afford 3 normals or 1 or, maybe, 2 single gene females at the time. But I failed to consider that it cost the same to feed and house a morph girl as it does a normal and that there would be so many single gene animals on the market when mine would be ready. Unless you drop your prices, you'll be caring for a lot of single gene animals that don't fit your breeding plans until they sell. I believe that was Jon's point about not getting normal females. This is a real big issue to consider for any breeder/collector, but especially a real small scale one as rack space/rodents are at a premium (this can be different if you have a male with 3 genes or more). I think you'll be much better off going a little slower and being real selective about the genes you want to work with, build up your females first (single and double gene) and then go for a powerful male you really like.