Actually we currently have 7 adult breeder females and 3 females that are not yet old enough to breed. I'm on the hunt of the local pet stores for 2 more nice looking females to broaden our genetic base and bring me up to 12 females. I know it doesn't matter for feeders but I like nice looking rats so I'm picky about which ones I buy or keep back from our own colony.

With the range of ages of our snakes (and with Brannagh and Orlah at Gene's) we are basically self-sufficient for rats right now. I still have to buy mice though for our 3 mouse eating snakes. I mostly feed fuzzies, pups, weanlings and smalls right now. We never feed anything larger than a small or small/medium (Brannagh and Orlah only) so if I have extra's that are getting too big I either sell them to another forum member for his boa or trade them off at a local pet store for mice, etc. Once Severus the BCI is big enough he'll do that job for us (we really miss Rauri sometimes - that was his job!). We are currently feeding 5 BP's and 1 BCI off this colony. So basically one female or so per snake to feed.

Our females generally produce approximately 10 to 16 pinks per litter. I would say the average is likely about 12. We rarely if ever lose any of them.

We did have a problem with a male we bought coming up infertile so we got way out of cycle for a couple of months. That's getting resolved as Damian is now breeding his first females, with Lightning and SuperNova almost ready to tackle some of our big girls.