You have to weigh the risk against acceptable outcomes. I have a male I really wanted to breed this year because I have a targeted morph I want to produce but he is underweight. He is not the world's best feeder and I did not want to risk him going totally off food so I postponed. I did not want the planed females for the pairing to produce nothing this year so I went in a different direction. The male in question cost too much to risk and he may still not have produced anyway so just taking pure monetary motivations into consideration he did not get paired this year. Not to mention the fact that one of my daughters really likes that particular animal and I did not want to have to explain to her that we lost the snake because Daddy was in too big of a hurry. She still does not understand why another snake was "dating" the original one's girlfriend. ROFL