Reptile & Amphibian Forums

So my current snakes are below:

1.1 pastel (sub-adult male, 400g, baby female less than 100g)
0.2 normal (breeding size, one 1350g, other 1150g)

I have a birthday coming up, so I'll probably have like 300ish to spend on snakes, and I am kinda torn on what to get. As far as aesthetics go I am a fan of most morphs, I am mostly looking for some advice with regards to breeding. A spider makes the most sense, bumblebees are always awesome. Mojaves are also appealing. I'd also consider a pair of hets, but I'm not sure I could get a decent sized pair (ready to go in say '10 breeding season) for that much.

I am leaning to going with a spider, but I can't really decide on male or female. My current pastel female is only like 100g. Will she be ready to breed next season (that is breed in '10 for '11 babies) or only be ready for '11? A male would be nice just because I could get one for this season and have another male to try breeding for this season and still be able to make bumble bees when my baby pastel female gets big enough.

Guess my thinking is that since for the same price as a juvi male any female I get wouldn't be much bigger than my pastel baby now, meaning that getting a female spider won't allow me to produce bumble bees any time sooner. Am I right in this thinking?

Theres probably tons of morphs I'm leaving out, so suggest anything. Can't be more than $450 at the most though.

I agree with spider...they are awesome by themselves, but there is so much you can do with them. In the future you can even try out some recessive crosses ( I LOVE the axanthic spider!).

My personal suggestion, other than spider, would be cinny/black pastel. You can make pewters, and even supers (over a few generations) since you have two pastels. They also make some other nice combos and are within your price range.

Best wishes!
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Cheers,
Jessica
10.15 Ball Pythons; 8.9 Corn Snakes; 0.0.1 Green Tree Python
2.2 Jungle Carpet Pythons
6.6.1 Bci
3.0 Crazy Dogs and 2.0 cats
Some Tropical Fish
...........and growing!

Cool, I've been thinking of a cinny or black pastel as well. It will probably depend on what I can find at the two upcoming expos. I live in Florida, so I'll be at the Jacksonville one next weekend and the Tampa one on the 25.

Also, should the spider be a male or female? That is my major concern at the moment. I'm leaning towards the male given that I have a baby female pastel already.

I'd go with male. You could get other female morphs in the future to plug him to. Thanks for considering my opinions!
Best wishes.
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Cheers,
Jessica
10.15 Ball Pythons; 8.9 Corn Snakes; 0.0.1 Green Tree Python
2.2 Jungle Carpet Pythons
6.6.1 Bci
3.0 Crazy Dogs and 2.0 cats
Some Tropical Fish
...........and growing!

I'd go with a female spider. IMO you can never have to many female spiders!! There is always something I wanna plug in with my spiders.
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Coolluigi

0.1 Pastel Pos Het Hypo
1.0 Pastel
1.0 Mojave Poss Het Hypo
1.0 Yellowbelly
1.0 Het Pied
0.4 Normal
0.1 Het Hypo
0.2 Spider
1.2 Het VPI Axanthic (Babies are getting bigger!!)
and soon to be more. *fingers crossed*

You could do what I'm doing. Save your money!!! First decide what you want. If it's a buble bee. Set aside the 300 and anything else you get till the end of this season. Then when you have 600-700 saved up, buy an adult spider or something. Then you can breed it faster. I'm doing this with a pied. I want a pied but I don't want to do the het thing. So i'm saving through out the year and this christmas, I'm going to find a cheap male pied and buy it.

Spiders are cool and you can do so much with them. Since you like spiders and you can never have to many Morphs maybe this would be a good way to go. The Cinnies and Black Pastels are great too but maybe a breeding size male Spider is the answer. You have 2 female Normals that will be great size for breeding this fall if you feed them well and also your male Pastel should easily make breeding size. You get a breedable male Spider, put him to one of your female Normals and use your male Pastel for the other female Normal. Odds would be out of the 2 females and the male Spider and male Pastel you would get half the babies as Normals, a quarter of the babies would be Pastels and the other quarter would be Spiders. Then you hope a lot of the baby Spiders and Pastels were female. The only reason I suggest the breeding size male Spider over the Cinnie or Black Pastel is the cost. You are much more apt to get a better deal on a large male Spider than on a large male Cinnie. Neat combos either way and the as time goes on you could make Bees, Killer Bees, Super Pastels and the such from those combos.. The Spiders and Pastels are a great combo makers no matter what you put them with down the road as you aquire more or different Morphs. Chances are that your female Pastel will not be up to breeding size until the fall of 11 and spring of 12. Regardless feed them well while they will eat because so many of them go off of feeding in the winter months and that is where you will get slowed down. Hope that is helpful.
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JEM from sunny AZ.

2.20 Normals
5.9 Pastels
3.6 Normal Spiders
1.3 Orange/Butterscotch Ghosts(BallPython777 Mark Petros)
1.1 Spiders 100% het Ghost(thanks Mark Petros)
0.2 Spiders 66% het Ghost
0.3 66% het Orange Ghost
0.1 Pastel Ghost
0.1 Super Pastel 100% het Ghost
2.0 Albino
1.0 Caramel Albino
0.4 100% het for Albino
0.5 50% het for Albino
0.4 Yellow Bellies
1.2 100% het for Clowns
1.2 Cinnamons
1.2 100% het for Pied
0.3 66% het for Pied
1.3 Mojaves
1.1 Beautiful Black Pastels(thanks Gulf Coast Reptiles)
1.1 BumbleBees(thanks for the AWESOME Bees Marc Bailey)
1.0 Super Pastel
0.1 Chocolates(Thanks Brandon of Priceless Pythons)
1.1 Lessers
2.1 Fire's(Thanks Brandon of Priceless Pythons)
1.2 High White Calico's(Thanks Brent from BRB)
1.1 SpotNoses(Thanks Brandon of Priceless Pythons)
1.0 Enchi
1.0 Orange Ghost
1.0 Pinstripe
0.1 Lemon Blast
1.0 Vanilla Ghost(Thanks again GCR for all the great snakes)

17 Tarantulas
Last but most Important 2.2 Children

Great advice, exactly what I needed, thanks to everyone.

I am still trying to get 1-3 more breeding sized females for this season, I'm hoping if I go the the shows on Sunday I can negotiate a good deal if I get a male spider and a couple 1000g females.

Main reason is that one of my females hasn't eaten since I got her like 5-6 weeks ago. I really don't know whats up, she is in the same conditions as all my other snakes, and they are eating like beasts. I even tried offering her a live rat and she didn't even show the slightest bit of interest. I'm going to be finishing up my snake rack this weekend, so I may switch to aspen bedding or some type of mulch, I've heard that can help. Also heard that keeping the rat for a day or so in a container will help increase the amount of scent and may help elicit a response.

She is kinda starting to worry me. She is really active and friendly (my adult female that is a good eater is really mean, hisses at me if I even approach her cage, but my god she has a great feeding response).

thanks again

Hey,

Just some things to consider getting a male. When you have certain morphs and you are buying homozygous males or in the case of your spider being a heterozygous Co-Dom you could start buying snakes that become irrelevant later. For example I bought a large female Pastel last year and a male pastel for breeding in 2010. Since then I added a pair of Super Pastels. So I would not want to breed the pastel male to her now, I would rather breed the male super to the Pastel. If you buy a spider male and then later make or buy a bumble bee male then your male spider would not be used I am guessing later. You are better off waiting if you can, but if money is the issue buy what you can afford. I know with your budget you could find a descent male bumble bee if you wait a few months. Just some thoughts. It is a pain in the rear to start selling off snakes you thought you were going to use and then get replaced by a better breeder.

Good luck,
Bill

Id go with a female regardless to what you get,, Females take longer to grow so you always want to get them 1st.. You can always pick up a different male up the road when your female morphs are ready ... Your male pastel will be ready next season if anything

What about getting a pinstripe male? They're going for about $300 now and you could possibly put enough weight on it the rest of the year to have it breed for you early 2010. He could also be bred to your female pastel when shes older and bigger and you could make pastels, pins and lemon blasts. Just a thought.