Kevin's 'A&K Exotics' 1st Year Breeding Question Thread

[kevinb]

Well you could always breed the female of the desired morph. And hold back whatever of their sons to breed the following year. Yes it take a bit longer but I like to produce stuff myself.


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True, true, that could be a way to go.

So, you don't actually have any of these snakes yet? Do you own any ball pythons yet? I'm just asking, because this is a pretty ambitious starting group for someone who already owns a few balls, let alone someone who doesn't. I'd suggest getting one or 2 and keep them for a year or so to make sure you actually enjoy keeping them. The worst thing that could happen is to acquire 15-20 snakes over a short period of time with plans to breed them 2-3 years down the road and then not enjoy keeping them at all.

Currently no, I do not have an ball pythons. However I did have two, a mojave pos het oG and a Pastel male. I loved them to death and was devestated when I had to get rid of them due to my mom. They were seriously the best pet I think I have ever owned. What I don't think anyone fully understands is that, yes it's a somewhat larger list for a noobie, but I won't be getting anything for probably another year, perhaps longer. I also will not be aquiring all these snakes at once. It will probably take my 2-3+ years to get all I am aiming for in my first years breedings. Logically I will probably get as many of the lower cost base morph females first (around 3 to start I would imagine) and just build from there until I have all the females I need, grow them for a few years, then continue the quest with the males. There is no point in dropping more money then necessary when females take 3-4 years to reach maturity. I mean yes I am in persuit to become a nurse, but even so nurses don't make millions. To be more straight forward here is my idea in a nutshell:

1.) Research research research for the next year
2.) Get my own apartment with my girlfriend and judge the space I have available for racks, along with average temps, humidity, etc.
3.) Build a couple racks, and rat racks, along with a incubator
4.) Get a trio of ASF and try my hands at breeding, freezing what ever pups may produce for when snakes arrive.
5.) Obtain between 3-5 base morph females, most likely 3, and over the course of a few months to cut down on up front cost
6.) build on until I have all the females I am looking for (a year or two+ I imagine)
7.) Grow said females until they are almost of breeding size
8.) start to obtain my males over the course of that said year or more
9.) When all have reached breeding maturity select 3 females to breed that year (I don't want to get over my head with babies)
10.) Try my hand at hatching out a clutch

Like I said before everyone seems to think I will be doing all this in like 3 months....not going to happen, sure I'll be making better money than now, but I still have other bills as priorities first. It's going to take a while..as most things do. Patience is a virtue.

IMO if you need the above questions answerd for you dont have the know how required to handle that many snakes at once. I think your massivly under estimating the work involved in keeping that many and breeding your own rats aswel. Id try gain some experience in keeping and breeding so you can iron out the creases and then add slowly to your collection.

Last thing you want to be doing is making a beginners mistake with several thousand grands worth of snakes. Clutch of pastel x normals no biggy.... a few clutchs with a estimated value of maybe 15-20k and your gonna be feeling suicidal

I get where you're coming from, but just because I asked essencially if people will buy pairs of codoms for supers, I don't understand how that impunes my knowledge? I'm not saying your wrong or right, I just don't see how me asking for an opinion can lead to me being stupid? I know how supers are made, I just know several people go different ways about it, whether they get a pair of codoms, or they get a base morph codom and a 2-3 gene animal with the codom in it, or then ever just breed the codom to a normal and get the other sex codom from the breeding to raise up and breed back to mom or dad. I know quite a bit about ball pythons, I just prefer asking questions, as compared to doing something stupid and getting the whole snake world angry. And yes the clutchs I might procduce will be very pricey in terms of retail value, but hey I'm really doing it for the sake of creating new never seen snakes, not because I care about how much money is in it. If I cared about money I'd be doing something much different, where live animals aren't involved. Plus I have heard and read that the snakes that sell fastest are the $1-2k snakes. I know what I want and how to get there, it just takes time, something everyone on here should know about. It's all a waiting game.