Reptile & Amphibian Forums

The corns will be housed in seperate cages until breeding season. Is 1.2 what everyone uses or something else. Im going with my first buy on the corns nextr week. Also anyone delt with VMS professional herpeculture? Thanks

I've got a pretty even male/female ratio in general... I don't like to get more than one or two snakes heavy in either gender. The biggest issue with keeping 1.2 corns is, what happens if your male dies or escapes? What do you breed with your females then? For any one cornsnake gene that I have in my collection, I try to have atleast 2 snakes of each gender carrying that trait. For example, I have 1.0 lavender, 1.0 amel het lav, 0.1 lav, and 0.1 normal dh hypo lav. If I were to lose one of my males, I could still produce lavenders. If I only had one male, and lost him, I would have to rush around trying to find someone selling lav males in the spring, or else not breed at all.

As for VMS Herps, Sean (the owner) is a nice guy and they're a good company to deal with. I've noticed a few inaccuracies in their morph descriptions (Ex: butter contains no Anery A), but their snakes are of decent quality in my experience, and they have one of the nicest tables when they do the show in Denver...
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"You keep WHAT in your freezer?"
"Mice. And rats. If that bothers you, I can call them 'cows' instead."

Thanks for the reply, who would you recommend for buying corns online? Thanks

The best online breeders are Don Soderberg (South Mountain Reptiles), Kathy Love (Corn-Utopia), and Rich Zuchowski ([bleep]). Other good people to get in touch with are Clint Boyer (if you live in Oregon), Serpwidgets, and Frank Pinello.

TBH, which breeder you buy from depends on just what morph you're looking for. Don and Frank are bloodred specialists, Kathy's the best for okeetees, Rich for lavs... and soforth.

-Kat
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"You keep WHAT in your freezer?"
"Mice. And rats. If that bothers you, I can call them 'cows' instead."

Im not trying to be a bad guy here but unless you are breeding top of the line corns your probably gonna be stuck with 5 dollar apiece normals or amels that you cant even get rid of.This spring i bought a trio of hypo's i planned to breed,but with all the corns flooding the market im just going to keep them as pets....Paul.

Seriously, I have a friend who lives in an area where the petshops pay her $20 for normal hatchlings and almost always have a need for more, and yet she would have an exceedingly difficult time selling lavenders. Heck, she's even asked to buy hatchlings off of me to resell to those stores.

Just because in general the cornsnake market is flooded does not mean that all areas are swamped with hatchlings.

I honestly don't believe that the only reason to breed corns is to produce new morphs. Breeding can be done just for the enjoyment of seeing those cute little noses peek out of the eggshells. Or perhaps the person is breeding them mostly for feeders. Or maybe they're planning on selling every snake they hatch. So what?

Producing high dollar morphs doesn't make anyone 'elite', and producing low-end morphs doesn't make someone any less of a snake-lover. There's nothing wrong with '$5 amels'.

If you want to get philisophical, encouraging people to only breed the high-end morphs will cause an increase in the number of high-end morph corns available, which will cause the value of high-end morphs to drop. Pretty soon those former high-end morphs will be available for the same price as normals, amels, hypos, etc. as a result.

IMO, people should breed whatever they feel like breeding. If they want to breed hypos, let them breed hypos. If they'd rather breed lavs, then let them breed lavs. Trying to induce scaricity by implying that those that contribute to the abundance of availability are somehow not as ethical as those that refrain from it seems to me to be an inappropriate tactic.

-Kat
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"You keep WHAT in your freezer?"
"Mice. And rats. If that bothers you, I can call them 'cows' instead."

np

I think that argument is valid in more and more areas each year. I've heard a lot of breeders in various states say they're sitting on lots of corns when, in years past, they normally sell out fairly quickly. In my own area this has been the case over the past few years.

I know for my own collection...I'm only going to breed my "projects" from now on, just for my own pleasure. I'm no longer going to breed every corn I own, I used to do that just purely for the fun of it, then wholesale them dozens at a time to local shops (I don't make money this way, but it's not about the money). I used to sell normals and amels by the bunch to local shops. I remember many trips to local pet shops when the owners would see me in their store and say "hey, got any corns? we need more corns", this hasn't been the case lately.

If someone lives in an area where there's not an abundance of corn breeders, they'd actually be doing local herpers and shop owners a favor by breeding a variety of corn morphs.

Breeding is a TON of fun...so breed what you can sell and HAVE FUN

You may not make any money but its still a ton of fun. I've been into herps on and off for 19 years. I'm not very good at it but getting beter at it as I get older. I had w/c snakes give birth and another snake lay eggs that i fialed to hatch, but it was only two years ago I hatched my first snakes and it was one of the most exciting expieriences of my life.even if you have to give them away its worth it.someone will always be willing to take them for free.some of the cheap corns I breed I took to a local pet store and traded them for credit on feeder mice.
The ratio i've been collecting is 1.2 or 1.3 even if the male did die for whatever reason, you could get a male up to breeding size in a shorter time then the females.your not going to hurt a male breeding him to early.your females would be all that much bigger and would probably do better.
One more thing Rich Z. has some awesome corns.he's a bit grumpy some times(tired i guess he produces 5,500 corns a year), but an honest guy with some great snakes and he backs them up with feeding guranties.I wouldn't rule him out on the bloodreds either .I got 1.1 hypo bloods .1 pewter and .1 normal from him this year and thier great looking healthy snakes.

Im not really in it for the money I just like doin it. If I make enough to cover the food then thats fine and if not thats fine too. I just like goin to the shows and setting up shop..