Breeder rep or looks?

[purplemuffin]

ALOT more expensive that way. I want to eventually get into Hypos and Axanthics and the difference going het is huge....though if you can pull it off thats at least a year ahead you'd be, OTOH, puttin that money in hets and you'd have a stockpile of your own Pieds and Albinos after one season.....my 2c

True, but I'm not ever planning on having racks and racks of snakes I'd like to keep my breeding group small, and I don't want to invest in animals I will end up having to sell or rehome because the don't fit into my breeding plan anymore as I have 'better' versions, so for males especially I don't want to get something that's just a single gene or het, unless it's outstanding and will always be useful. I want to make nice multi gene snakes, but I don't want to end up either getting rid of my pets I have grown attached to when I need room--or have 500+ breeder snakes through keeping them all and upgrading a lot! I'll for sure add new ones, but not to the point where I start to run out of room. I'll be strictly small time :]

I might invest in a few het females of the recessive gene in order to just produce a lot more animals, but I DO want at least one recessive visualxvisual pair if I do breed with any hets, so I can be more sure I produce at least a few visuals that can help my reputation as a real breeder. And any hetxhet will probably also have a visual codominant morph added on, so they aren't all straight hets. Pastel het pieds or lesser het pieds might be nicer than just producing all het pieds. I don't want to make possible hets if I can help it though!

I know it's going to be expensive, but I'd rather invest in the beginning in regards to the recessives at least!


As far as strong lines go...When I look into snakes, I like to ask for pictures of the parents if the snake isn't from a line(aka NERD lemon pastel vs. a really gorgeous regular pastel), and I would especially love to see images of the snake's parents as hatchlings and as adults, because I want to get an example of what the snake will look like as an adult. If I see a gorgeous snake who's parents were gorgeous in the same way as babies--but turned into ugly ugly adults, I..probably won't buy the snake! If I see a snake who's parents looked the same as it as hatchlings and they grew into AMAZING adults, than yes, I'll be more likely to get that one!
So at least in that case, I'll know the grandparents and parents of the snakes I produce are beautiful, and that's one step in the right direction to having a strong line of good genetics, even if the snake isn't from someone like NERD who's worked with the same line for generations of snakes Then, the line is in your hands. Take the baby snake you produce and breed it with a beautiful mate who also has beautiful parents of the 'look' you want, and now you are into the fourth generation of awesome snakes. Keep all these photos of the parents, grandparents, great grandparents, siblings, their kids, etc. and you can show that you have a top notch line that just makes awesome animals all the time! It's a lot of work, but hey, it gets you a strong line of good genes to work with after a while, and it CAN all start with buying from small time breeders!