Ok so I have a male banana/pastel/yellow belly/fire BP that is at 450 grams. Now he is a early 2019 hatchling. So would he be appropriate to breed now or should I wait till he puts on more pounds? Idk if age more than size would help even the equation.
While you can certainly try breeding a male at that size, I would highly recommend erring on the side of caution with that.
I bred one of my males at around 500 grams, and he went on to sire two clutches in his first season… BUT he also stayed on food the entire time and is now around 800 grams.
You can certainly try breeding him IF he’s still eating well, but you must keep in mind two things:
- He might not lock, maybe not at all if he’s not mature enough
- At that size, a male won’t have as much fat stores as a bigger/older male would.
- With that, if he does go off of food and/or starts losing weight, you have to pull him from the breeding rotation, stop pairing entirely, and try to get him back on food/back up to a healthy weight.
It’s very easy to breed a male to death, so again you have to be very careful about breeding younger/smaller males.
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I’ve had quite a few 350g males sure fertile clutches at 6 months old. I’ve never had a young male stop feeding to the point of worry. They have always done what they needed to do and get back on track. Some makes will test your patience and not want anything to do with a female for a couple of years.
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