Read the article and there were interesting points one of which was related to relevent age of pups. Also related-ness of the moms.....



My colony by nature is all related, while decent sized, ~ 13.72 breeders plus pups and growouts at any given time, they are all somewhat related as I raise up new breeders from the pups. Every week, the about to pop moms are seperated into individual tubs. I check daily and those that have given birth are moved up in sequence in the racks while those still waiting are moved down. When I clean (or as they give birth is space is an issue) I combine two females and 24 pups (0.2.24) in one tub. Sometimes there is a domminance squable soon after but for the most part there are two females and 24 week old pups the following week. (barring the bad hand stealing pups for feeders)



As the feeder raids and weekly cleanings go on, the pups and moms are consolodated on each weekly cleaning into 0.2.24 groups with the "surplus" moms going back to the breeding cages for re-impregnation.



I am not picky about which pups go where, so as the groups are adjusted/consolodated each week, sometimes a few pups will go one way or another into a different tub. My moms seem to not care where the pups come from. As I'm building/adjusting my 0.2.24 tubs I keep a mental note on the pup count, + 3 -4 etc. and shuffle pups around to straighten it all out. Not all litters start out at 12 but 12 seems to be typical for my colony and seems to be a good number for moms to raise. They can easily raise fewer and they will grow faster but take up more tubs. They can also raise more but those pups grow slower (sharing te milk between more pups = less milk / pup.
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Thanks,





Dave Colling



www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com







0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)

0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)



LOL, to many snakes to list, last count (05/26/2009):

36.51 BRB

29.42 BCI

And those are only the breeders



lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

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