Hey guys! ill be buying my first breeder male to raise up within the coming week! I’m very excited to start my journey with my first breeders!
I’m buying a pinstripe het pied boy, what are your favorite pinstripe combos?
I’m looking into getting 2-3 females, and I’ve been thinking about bringing a calico into the mix, and obviously something that carries that other het pied, but I’m not entirely sure yet.
Id love to hear any feedback you may have!
If you’re buying hatchlings, buy females first, buy your male next year.
Otherwise I would buy 2-3 big adult pastel females and an adult female proven het pied, hold back a visual pied male and make money your first year on lemon blast babies, use that to buy a couple pied female hatchlings and start growing them up then go anywhere from there.
As crawd notes, the best forward thinking is to buy your females first as they take longer to grow up. Follow that up a year or two later with your male(s). That way, your animals all reach maturity for breeding at the same time.
Buying the male first means you have two to three years of him just taking up space and doing nothing while you wait for the females to reach maturity
I have no real issue with watching him grow, I actually really prefer it. Breeding is not set in stone by any means, but ill very seriously consider breeding him in the future. Even if my snakes aren’t all lined up age/maturity wise, waiting and just keeping them as pets is just as great since i thankfully have no dire need to get into breeding right away (:
You will watch him grow in either case. If you’re insistent that you HAVE to have this male for whatever particular reason (you don’t…but trust I’m new enough I remember the feeling), then go ahead and get him, and in 2-3 months I would start buying adult females that are PROVEN het pied. You can drop clutches by the end of year 1 instead of year 3, hold back the nicest visual pied male and a couple females and sell the rest.
By breeding season 3 or 4 you’ll be pairing visual to visual all of your own production (unless you choose to bring more in in the meantime). You’ll also have 2-3 years of experience with clutches so you don’t make a first time mistake on a visual pied clutch, AND you’ve made enough to pay for most of their food expenses etc.
By contrast, if you buy this male and hatching het females it’s 2 or 3 years minimum before you can do a single pairing. You pay for all food and maintenance in the meantime. So year 3 you have your first clutches, hold back visuals, wait another 2-3 years for those visual females to grow up so you’re probably in year 6 before you’re pairing visual x visual pieds.
If you want to be a breeder…plan accordingly. I’m using some generalities with the numbers but the point is how you START matters. It’s a difference in time of 2-4 years to get your projects rolling and several thousand dollars difference even if you just have a few snakes.
Now, If you just want to have a pet snake and maybe breed it someday then really you can’t go wrong just do whatever you want and enjoy snake ownership!! There’s nothing wrong with that.
Just so so many people burn out because they think the hobby is a money pit and it’s too hard, takes too long etc… when really they just didn’t plan.
thank you so much for the advice! I don’t really see myself becoming a larger scale breeder, but mainly just as a small hobby to make some pretty snakes. I want to get a good head start, so i have breeding experience and snakes under my belt.
Although i know what morphs i want to work with the most, im sure i (along with many others) struggle because there’s the morphs you WANT to work with, vs the morphs that stay relevant enough to make money to support the rest of your collection.
I think you need a mix. I see a lot of people seem to give the advice of ignore any business savvy and ONLY WORK WITH WHAT YOU LIKE.
And that’s great and all but it’s not realistic for many people to be able to ignore that side and make it. I’m a big fan of smaller breeders like us doing both. Work on a pet project but have a couple BEL pairings or pied/clown etc that you just do every year to sell type of thing. You don’t have to plan to get rich but have yourself a free hobby! If I could golf for free I’d probably never disc golf again 
but if disc golf cost as much as golf that would burn me out too
Also you really love the animals you’re going to become a fan of what you work with over time most likely. Probably 100x more hobbyists burn out because they refuse to plan and consider the business side. I’ve never heard yet of someone who burned out because they got into clown and just thought it was so ugly it made them hate all reptiles and quit.
I agree I see this far to often. Of course you have to work with what you enjoy to see each day. But unless you also work with some highly desirable morphs, you won’t sell your snakes nearly as fast. But if you just want to breed for yourself and you don’t mind holding onto some clutches for longer before you move them, go with what you like. If you’re going to breed to reinvest and try and make some extra cash, you almost need to work with what’s currently popular and popular in the near future. Which sometimes can be hard to foresee.
Geeeeeettt Cllooowwwnnnnnn
Spookie ghostie voice*
my birthday IS coming up next week… might just buy myself a clown… because i don’t have any self control for pretty snakes 