Questions On Breeding Strategy

[Austin Smith]

I'm considering breeding in the future and I have a few questions that I believe are pretty original.

If I'm breeding two snakes together, one a morph, the other normal, what sex should each snake be idealy? By that I mean, should the morph be female or should the male?

Also, should have a few females and breed one male, with rest of course, with each of them? Obviously breeding one female to three males wouldn't make much sense. Am I correct in my assumptions?

Basically I need some help with understanding how to think of breeding strategies that will be most fruitfull in the long run.

If any long time breeders could share from their experiences and give me a few things to consider it would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Austin

[Nate]

I'm considering breeding in the future and I have a few questions that I believe are pretty original.

If I'm breeding two snakes together, one a morph, the other normal, what sex should each snake be idealy? By that I mean, should the morph be female or should the male?

I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter

Also, should have a few females and breed one male, with rest of course, with each of them? Obviously breeding one female to three males wouldn't make much sense. Am I correct in my assumptions?

Typically it's 1 male to a few females...but there's no reason why you can't breed a few different males to a one female!!
Check this out!

We bred several of our females with more than one co-dom male this year. This normal female was bred by a super pastel and a mojave.

Basically I need some help with understanding how to think of breeding strategies that will be most fruitfull in the long run.

If any long time breeders could share from their experiences and give me a few things to consider it would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Austin

I'm no breeder...yet...but my best advice is to be patient...very patient

[Sputnik]

If I'm breeding two snakes together, one a morph, the other normal, what sex should each snake be idealy? By that I mean, should the morph be female or should the male?

Also, should have a few females and breed one male, with rest of course, with each of them? Obviously breeding one female to three males wouldn't make much sense. Am I correct in my assumptions?


Thanks,
Austin

Most people breed a male morph to normal females, at least I do.

You can breed three different males to the one female to increase the chances of different morphs. A lot of people run different male morphs through the same female.

Hope that helps.

[JLC]

If I'm breeding two snakes together, one a morph, the other normal, what sex should each snake be idealy? By that I mean, should the morph be female or should the male?

It kind of depends on what type of morph you're breeding and what you are trying to achieve. However, typically speaking, having a male morph and a normal female is most efficient. If you have a dominant trait such as pastel or spider...one males can potentially give you many morph offspring out of multiple females. Whereas, one female spider can only produce her one clutch. With recessive traits, such as albino...if you have a male who is het for albino and a normal female...you can hold back all her possible-het-daughters to breed back to their sire to increase your odds of producing a visible albino.

Also, should have a few females and breed one male, with rest of course, with each of them? Obviously breeding one female to three males wouldn't make much sense. Am I correct in my assumptions?

I would never do multiple sires to a single female if you were breeding recessive traits because you would never know what the babies were het for without years of proving them out through trial and error. However, it's not uncommon for people to run different dominant morph males with the same female....and occasionally they will have a clutch with two different morphs thrown. However...this does not increase your odds of having morph babies. The odds are the same for each egg to be a morph, whether you use one sire or multiple.

Sorry, I'm not a long-time-breeder or anything...but that's my take on it anyhow.

[Sputnik]

I would never do multiple sires to a single female if you were breeding recessive traits because you would never know what the babies were het for without years of proving them out through trial and error.

Right on, you want to know what your hets are!

[Austin Smith]

Thanks for the info. What you said about multiple males to a female with for a recessive mutation makes since.

So let me get this straight, If I mate a spider male to a normal female then mate a pastel male to the same female I could potentially get spider and pastel offspring?

[Emilio]

This is my first breeding season and I'm going to run my pastel and yellowbelly to two different girls. I'm going to keep them each with the same female I don't like the mixed clutches. I'm equally enthused about getting females from these pairings so I can have supers in a couple year's. So for me I don't like multiple sire's