How Do You Prioritize Your Snakes and Reducing Collection Size?

[Ax01]

ok i am considering reducing my collection. with 30-plus BP's and snakes, i need to consider letting some go to make my time and costs more manageable.

how many u have and how do u do it?

[OneEyedFox]

Ahhh animal keeping, an addiction. I only have one snake (that is currently lost) but I do have two cats, a turtle, a dog, a black telescope goldfish, two regular gold fish, an algae water (Smaug), and a bunch of Minos, plus one of my cats is pregnant, and I STILL want more animals. Honestly I would keep the ones your developed a bond with, the ones that have a story behind them that you love to hold and take care of, and sell the excess. As for selling, I'm not the one to go to for where to sell them, or how to price them. I'm sure other users can be more help.


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[StillBP]

Personally I would consider where my breeding plans were going and let go of the animals that didn't fit perfectly

[Lizardlicks]

I haven't had to face this yet but I I feel like I'm getting close to my cap with 10 snakes. I love them all though, they're so beautiful and every time I think, "this is my favorite snake to work with," I move onto the next one and it a totally different creature and I think it again!

[distaff]

Where do you want to go with the hobby? As was said above, which breeding projects are the most important to you? Change and re-focus is just part of life.

Re-homing animals is way harder than shedding "stuff." I have to remind myself of that every time I find I want another animal. I have four snakes (there are still four more species that I want examples of). I have farm animals, plus one canary, two budgies (want,want,want Society finches!...and pigeons), three dogs, two pet ratties, seven goldfish...

At my age (48), I'm also considering what might outlive me. African grey parrots and tortoises are out.

Best of luck. I hope you can find good homes easily.

[locolobito]

I'm facing this same problem. Since I have an unknown ghost and 3 dh orange ghost/unknown ghost, I am concentrating on them and them only. Fighting myself right now.

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[JodanOrNoDan]

I volunteer to help you reduce your collection by taking the Cherry Bomb off your hands......

I have not reduced my collection yet. My breeding stock is sitting at around 50 animals. The only animals I have let go are babies. My estimated limit for the time and space I have now is about 100. I imagine the time will come when I have to get rid of some of my males since they are being replaced by their sons, but my founders will be around as long as I can take care of them. As of right now, I see no reason to get rid of any of my girls. Most are at least paying for their own keep. It is very hard to let animals go. I really have to disassociate myself from the babies that are getting sold.

It is always easier if you let them go to a good home. Hint, hint

[bcr229]

You have to brutally honest with yourself and look at why you keep critters - do you want to breed, keep, or both? Are there any that have minimal value as breeders but they put a smile on your face when you handle them because of their attitudes? Or do you keep snakes strictly to breed and everything else goes out the door?

Once you have a number (more or less) of critters that you think you can keep without making yourself crazy, don't try to downsize to that number all at once. It would be like trying to eat an elephant with one bite instead of a spoonful at a time. Instead, work on rehoming 2-3 at a time. Since you're not in a rush and you don't need the money from them to pay the rent, you can be picky about where they go; I'd rather give a snake to a good home where it will be kept and appreciated than sell it. Once the first two or three are gone you can pick the next few to move along.

[dboeren]

Everything in life is priorities. Space, time, money, attention, etc...

Don't rush. Take the time to think through what you really want to do and how the animals you have fit into this plan. Do you want to breed a specific morph? Do you want to collect many morphs? Do you just want some cool pets? Is time and money to take care of them a big factor for you? How about space? Try to focus in on what you want to do most and then think about what animals don't really fit in with that plan. Also, don't pick up any new ones until you figure out The Plan.

Since it does sound like time and money are factors for you, work on figuring out what your ideal capacity actually is. Do you need to reserve some headroom for breeding season too? How drastically do you need to cut down?

[Stewart_Reptiles]

First it depends on how you look at your collection, if you look at it as breeding stock and investment the obvious is to keep your most valuable projects and keep the most gene you can.

If you look at them as pet than it will make it a lot more difficult.

I have downsized over the years and will likely keep doing so (high end animals over quantity) I refocused, narrow down my projects and decided what I wanted my collection to be about and sold everything that did not fit in (I decided that I would focus on select Hypo, Pied and Clown combos, I was a lot more spread out before).

Now that being said there are animals no matter what change in the projects or having to cut back will NEVER go anywhere because of sentimental reasons.

So establish which have to stay for sentimental reasons, which should stay from the breeding standpoint, figure out what your ideal number is, and remember ideal number means breeders + hatchlings (during breeding season), it's one thing to have breeders but when hatchling season comes around if can easily be overwhelming and even more so if you have to breed feeders too.

It's never an easy solution but always the best one.

I used to have 75 now I am down to about 50 (adults and holdbacks) add 100 to 150 during hatchling season - Ideal target number is set to 34 breeders and producing no more than 20 clutches a year, that's for the BP, the other projects are smaller projects. And of course on the top of that I produce all my feeders (one of the reason I keep my collection small is not to have to expend the feeder production)