I’m trying to plan my first project and really like freeways, especially some of the freeway pieds I’ve seen on marketplace. So far this is my plan
•Female Ivory (I already have one)
•get several male asphalt OR yellow belly combos with the morphs I like such as pastel, OD, etc that are also het pied
•prove them out for asphalt
•either get some ready to breed YB het pieds or use the offspring from the ones that prove to be YB in step 3
The goal is to have some more fun with it and not just buy someone’s full combos ready to breed. Would anyone do or suggest anything different or an alternate route here?
If you want to go the freeway pied route, I’d get (4) females and (1) male. I’d personally get the females as visuals, but if money is an issue get at least one visual yb pied female. Then get your het pied asphalt. You don’t want multiple males because then you’d have all these males and one female. Multiple females with one or two males would be your best option.
Got it. So my current one snake collection is gonna blow up into 6 snakes within the next couple months also makes way more sense to have multiple females. More offspring, more projects at once. Now I gotta do more hunting
Thank you
Keep in mind this also means more offspring you have to house, feed and find homes for. I feel like everyone jumps in automatically assuming there’s going to be an instant market for their snakes, but I think it’s imporant to be realistic about coming in as a new breeder without the connections/reputation. What is going to make someone want to buy your snakes specifically?
A great example of this is I still have all 5 snakes of my first clutch, and I’ve had them up for sale months now. I finally took the female down because I might as well keep her I added a lot of weight to her.
Sometimes the market is hot and sometimes it isnt. You just always have to have a plan for when it isnt.
Thank you both for the advice, I think I’m going to start with just 2-3 females at most. That may be too much honestly. Going to look for either a YB pied F or an OD YB
And luckily I do have a few local connects atm from selling my geckos, only issue is I know they’ll refuse to pay full price since these are mostly pet shops. May be an easy way to get the offspring I don’t want off my hands asap though.
I ended up getting a really nice looking pastel YB pied poss OD female. She’ll ship out next month. I’m excited. The male will likely be a possible asphalt het pied but I’ll cross that road once my females mature.
That’s what I’m hoping for! Starting with some freeways (I love pastel freeway pieds), definitely going to venture into other stuff. I really hope I can prove OD out of her because OD freeways and the OD pieds from ozzy are my current favorite looking snakes.
She also just looks great in general with the different shades splotching pattern
What other projects could I get into with this girl? The other morphs I’m most interested in are calico, and hypo & butter.
This is a very important point. Average shelf time around here for hatchlings is 3-6 months. A year is not uncommon though. I have 15~ 2021 animals still in the baby racks. With the economy the way it is, shelf times are going to increase too.
Hello, I have a question about this. Does shelf time increase price? The animal would gain weight, require more investment from breeder so I assume it would. How does one factor this?
The short answer is females generally yes, males generally no. It all depends on the genetics of the animal. Anything lower in value will out-consume it’s purchase price at a certain point. Remember they don’t just cost food, they cost heat (power) and time too.
Not necessarily, it depends on the animal. Female desert ghost? Sure, it proably will incease in value the longer you keep it (not that I really envision a female desert ghost being unable to sell), a male mojave? Not likely.
Personally I like to keep tabs on the combos/morphs that will be possible offspring from my pairings to see not only what prices they sell for, but also how long they’re on the market before selling and how many are available. Just because Mike Wilbanks/Justin Kobylka/NERD is selling an animal for $XX and it flies off the shelves doesn’t necessarily mean a smaller breeder without the name recognition will have the same result. Look at what’s selling, see what’s been sitting on craiglist for months in your area, and plan accordingly.
Breeding what you love is great, but if nobody wants what you produce, be prepared to keep them
OD, Enchi, Asphalt would be some great dominants to add to the formula (het pied or homozygous pied if funds allow). You could go another direction get a nice clown male to make double hets. Clown pieds are sweet. You could also get some sort of more cutting edge (rare) dominant mutation, like a confusion het pied. Or you could go a completely different route and get a desert ghost to make double hets (or a DG het pied if funds allow). Desert ghost everything seems to be the future right now. These are just a few of many many possible good directions, sky is the limit!
Thank you guys for the input. Since I’m currently going to be starting on a small scale with just 2 females I only hope to break even. From what I’ve seen with the morphs I’ll be working with they should sell in an appropriate time too. My main goal with this is to create “living art” with an animal I like a lot. I just don’t wanna be in the red if I can help it lol
I guess I’m still too green in this hobby but I don’t get the appeal of DG. Like I don’t see any difference in a DG X[other morph] vs just a standard [other morph]. That’s probably just me though and I’m overlooking something here.
To clarify I see the difference in a normal DG, just not the combos
It mostly cleans up the colors, makes it brighter, and it typically gets brighter with age as well. Enhancer is a gene that I believe is another “line” of DG, and it does the same. Mutation creation has a lot of combos that on there videos show the changes quite well.
Oh okay I see it now for sure then. I kinda wanna see what OD butter DG (maybe hypo too?) freeway would look like. I saw a super nice OD butter freeway pied on market that sparked my interest in freeways so I can only wonder
also makes way more sense to have multiple females. More offspring, more projects at once. Now I gotta do more hunting