Quote Originally Posted by nikkubus View Post
If you are heavily considering breeding, that's even more reason to slow down. If you do not take some time to really learn about the genetics before you start buying more snakes, you are going to kick yourself later. If you just start buying snakes that you like the look of, when it comes time to breed, you are not going to have great success, and then when you finally do understand which types of morphs you should be pairing, all your space will be filled and you can't get which ones you need to make your projects work how you want. 95% of the time, people that decide to breed don't regret not purchasing snakes earlier, they regret not purchasing the RIGHT snakes and having a large collection of snakes they will never breed because something else makes a lot more sense to meeting their goals.

If you really, really, really want more right now, get all females. It's still going to limit you in the long run, but at least you CAN get one or two expensive powerhouse males later on and still get really cool babies no matter what the females are. You can get a male from hatchling to breeding weight pretty darn quickly without sacrificing health if you do it correctly. Females take a lot longer to hit safe breeding size. I would still limit purchases of even females as much as you can stomach.

I don't have any kind of limit on how often I buy snakes, but I do have some rules for myself. I have big spreadsheet full of project ideas, and have the rough order planned out for what I will be buying, including equipment. Things sit on that list for a bare minimum of a year before I take the plunge so I have to time really think things through and decide if I like some other project better. Some snakes might jump from middle of the list to the front if I find a really good deal (like an adult proven female for sale with the genes I want for the roughly the same price as a hatchling for example). I keep a pretty decent amount of money set aside for rare snakes that are hard to find and deals, which is how I was able to cough up the money for my pure Kalatoa retics when Andrew decided to put a 1.1 pair of holdbacks up for sale.

I total agree with this, i got my target list for my breeding plan, my first target is a CaliBee and my second target is a GHI Mojave, i bought myself a 0.1 spider, and a 1.0 pastel calico(i know is kind of too early to get the male, but in my country, calico just too rare to get 1, so when i saw one of the breeder come out with calico, i straight away take it). Consider the morphs i need for my first target (CaliBee) already completed, so i thinking to proceed with my second target (GHI Mojave). recently I saw 1 of the breeder here, got a GHI Pastel hatchling, thats why i am thinking whether should I get it. Then when the GHI Pastel almost reach mature, I will start to look for a super mojave to pair with the GHI Pastel. So, for the worst scenario, the result will be atleast all mojave with no normal. This is my thought of breeding plan, pls give more advice if my plan has anything wrong or can be improve. I am starting from 0, I never bought any adult snakes just to breed them, for me, I prefer to keep the snakes from small, until adult, it takes few years ( 2 to 3 years for the female to mature), thats why i dont want to waste the 2 to 3 years time, just to take care of 2 snakes, and get only 1 clutch, might as well use the 2 to 3 years time, take really good care of at least 3 snakes(2 female and 1 male) and get 2 clutches of eggs ( i know breeding not just put both male and female together, there are still a lot to learn). Since I had a breeding plan, does that mean, i can/should get the GHI Pastel ?