What age and weight to start breeding...

[OhhWatALoser]

A lot of large breeders will push their young females very early, typically power feed them to short obesity, they will result in small clutches with a lot of slugs. Also, not cooling females will produce slugs, but people seem to still do it anyway. Start breeding chondros and breeders will understand the importance of age and cooling when it comes to healthy breeding. That's my personal opinion, but you see some of the biggest breeders in the world not, so maybe I'm wrong.

where do you get your info from? last year I bred 3 females, only 1 produced slugs, I didn't cool any of them. so your statement is false. I'm sure you will find 23980493 other people who have also had a healthy clutch of eggs without cooling.

To the OP, to play it safe, like everyone says 1500 grams, but there are people who have no problems breeding at 1200 grams, and I've talked to someone who bred a 950 gram female and she produced 4 healthy eggs (so they claim).

basically what it comes down to is the less they weigh, the more of a risk you take of having problems and they tend to have less eggs, but again, I've personally seen a 1300 gram girl lay 7 healthy eggs + 1 slug. so its not an exact science by any means. my 2000 gram girl only laid 5 eggs last year. but i forget who did a study, but basically reported that girls that weighed less than XXXX grams didn't lay eggs very often and produced smaller clutches if they did than the girls that weighed more.

o and also, males, as soon as you see sperm, they can breed, there is no weight or age, or very much risk, my male lesser was breeding at 450 and was producing sperm before that. our pastel hypo didn't start breeding until around 800 grams, not that he wasn't producing sperm, he just couldn't exactly figure things out until then lol. so their all different.