Posted by:
RandyRemington
at Sun May 6 22:34:50 2012 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by RandyRemington ]
No, the third female I sent off at a few months of age (and very small) and got her back as breeding size in early 2009 I think it was. I was just looking at her today and she is still a little bigger than her sisters I kept. It will be interesting if to see if she goes this year if she lays 1 or 2 more eggs or maybe the same number but just a bit bigger eggs.
It all comes down to what is the range of feeding schedules that are healthy and humane for the snakes. I personally think the range is pretty wide. In my case it was more the size of the mice but also some the frequency that slowed my girls down. Actually remembering back when they finally started growing was a brief window when I had my own ASF colony (before the wife got "wind" of them) and that got them up to size to eat medium rats.
So IF it turns out that your big breeder’s maintenance schedule isn't hurting them then it's just a personal preference/business decision. I know a moderately big breeder who in the last few years started pushing his young for sale snakes more. His thoughts are they sell better with size. But I could see the other side too. Your big breeder might have thousands of unsold animals and doubling his feeding bill might be a on the order of 10k dollars a month difference to the bottom line. For every animal he sells at a high asking price he may be sitting on many many more and of course could have lots of other overhead (building, employees, etc.). Also if we are talking about rare morphs if he can't sell the bigger ones for any more then pushing them to big size would just get his customers closer to being competition for all his effort. Just playing the devil's advocate, personally I'd love to feed more and have bigger babies both to sell and keep for breeders that much sooner when they don't sell.
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Randy Remington
anyone@snakemorphs.com
www.SnakeMorphs.com
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RE: mainenance feeding? - RandyRemington, Sun May 6 22:34:50 2012