I had my first successful breeding season this year. I have one clutch in the incubator and I think one more on the way. I’m a hobby breeder with a full time job. I also don’t have a ton of room so a huge collection isn’t going to happen any time soon. I plan on breeding around 8 females a year. I’m going to assume you’ve gotten husbandry down and have figured out how to breed them. It’s really not that tough.
I would start by figuring out what you want to get out of this. I know it’s kind of cliche, but I think It really helps to have a vision. It will help you focus your investment. You don’t want to by a bunch of snakes and realize they aren’t things you can use in your breeding plans. Again I don’t have a ton of room, so space is at a premium. I have a 2000 gram calico female that I may breed once. This is a mistake I made. She was cheap and healthy so I got her thinking I would breed her. I wanted calico in my collection, but all I was looking for was a big girl. Now she doesn’t really fit into any of my plans. It would have made more sense for me to spend a little more money and get a smaller female with calico plus other genes I wanted. I may end up giving her to a friend.
I got my females first and raised them up. Males mature faster and can breed multiple females. I have about a 1:3 male:female ratio.
For me it makes more sense to purchase the best females I can afford. I’d rather spend $1000 on one visual desert ghost than $1000 on three hets. Having a visual female faster, means I can get more genes into my project if by breeding her to males with the genes I want and making my own hets. I can then breed my best het male to my visual females the next year. If you aren’t going to go with recessives, I would try to get multi gene females. Remember my calico female. It would have been better for me to get one female with calico plus a few more genes, even if I needed to raise her up. One good multi gene female may cost me more, but I’m not feeding or housing as many snakes.
If you are going to breed you’ll need to make sure you have a reliable source of live food. That might mean breeding your own rodents.
One other thing, I spoke to local pet stores before I started. I wanted to make sure I had a place that would take my normals or single gene animals. I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t end up with a bunch of babies that I would end up feeding and housing for the rest of their lives.
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