Oh gosh, good luck Troy. I wish you the best of health and a full recovery!



Thank you for your kind words! Fortunately, it was a simple knee surgery, so nothing too drastic this time. I'm just hoping that this will "fix" my knee so I can go walking with my wife again.



"C" makes the most sense but if he's not ready and would make subpar babies or cause the girl to slug out or waste eggs I would rather not use him yet.



Well, either he's going to breed or he's not. I don't think his size is going to have any effect on the overall health of his offspring should he breed at a smaller/younger size/age. I've bred full sized males breed to full sized females and have had the females slug out. It's hard to say where the problem lies until you do multiple unrelated breedings with those animals to determine if it's those specific animals that have issues or sometimes they can just not be compatible with each other for some odd genetic reason or another.



We don't have any plans, just want healthy babies



And that's the big question, "what are your breeding plans?". If it's just to produce your first hognose clutch, that's one thing but if you are wanting to work on specific projects, then that is something entirely different.



The bigger question to ask is, will you be able to take care of a bunch of hatchlings if you cannot readily sell them? IMO, it's better to work towards specific projects than just to do random breedings for the sake of just breeding as after a while, it's far too easy to be overtaken by a bunch of hatchlings that you end up stuck with.



I know it's exciting to breed and produce snakes, but the reality is, not all hatchlings sell right away and they do grow fast and can require more time, effort and money than you initially planned to put into them. But only you can determine what is viable for you.



Either way, best of luck to you!
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Troy Rexroth

Rextiles

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