Anyone started breeding yet?

Only reason I'm asking is that I saw Rich's post in the Photo Gallery and either that is a late 2002 hatchling or a real early 2003, especially if he's questioning the morph.

I'm sort of duplicating what I did last year, only a few weeks later. My breeders just had their first post-brumation meal 6 days ago. In previous years, I've waited until mid-Feb to start to warm them up (last meals mid-Dec and cooling in Jan), but tried things earlier last year. It seemed to work well and I had all my clutches (even some doubles) hatched and feeding well and ready to be sold in August. I'm hoping for the same results this year.

Good heavens, NO! My stuff is still in brumation and likely will be until the end of February. I don't get hatchlings poking their heads out of their eggs starting until around the second week in July. This is both the most anticipated, and the most dreaded, time of the year for me.

Rich Z.

I'm jealous of all you people that seem to start breeding before me every year. I live in Alabama & brumate in my garage, so the temps don't get right until mid-Dec., & I like to keep 'em cool as long as the weather cooperates. The garage starts warming up in early March, & I am able to move 'em back to the reptile room in mid to late March, which gives me around 90 days of brumation time.

All my colubrids are still in brumation as well, and will be for at least three more weeks.
I just see no reason to get in a hurry with it. The snakes are fine being cool, and I am able to give the breeding pythons my full attention.
It's not a race to see who can get hatchlings to market first. They'll be just as interested in breeding 6 weeks from now as they would be if I already had them warmed up, and I personally think a longer brumation is better in many cases.

I don't shorten the total length of my corns' brumation, just move it a bit earlier in the year. I do this not to get the hatchlings to market faster (I sell wholesale, everything I have at one time) and usually this is in late July or early August, just in time for the Expo in Daytona. The main reason I do this is to give as many hatchlings as possible a longer time to become a well-established feeder before sale. I've bought too many hatchlings that turned out to be problem feeders and died. I don't want that to happen to anyone else, at least, not with any of my hatchlings.

Heck, I'm thinking I might want to keep my adults down until July or something. I can't find the time to get anything done now as it is, so when they all get into the breeding mood, I have no idea where I am going to find the time to throw them together.

Maybe I should just shut the doors and let them all out of their cages in a big corn snake orgy. Invoking Murphy's law, I would be guaranteed to get oodles of bizarre animals, because I wouldn't have a clue whom the father was of them.

Seriously, mine will be down until about the third week of February. Breeding usually takes place in April, egg laying in May, and hatching begins around the second week in July.

Later........

Ya know Rich, we are all always trying to get your advise, you should establish an "Aprentice" program, where people who want to learn more about caring for and breeding corns can come work for you in exchange for the benifit of your years of expierience and an upclose look at your operation and how you work it.

Think about it. If I lived within 50 miles of you I would go for a deal like that, getting to have a first hand working knowledge of how Serpenco works........I bet some people would pay for that priveledge.......I'd just work my tush off, if I were in Florida!

Hell, I wish I could find someone in California just willing to teach me to sex snakes, I offered to pay one herp store to teach me and they completly ignored my request! ~I purchased a video, but I would have paid 3 times as much for personal expeirience from an instructor than I was willing to pay for the video, no matter how good the video is!

I guess the only problem with that scenario (hiring people to work with the expectation of receiving training instead of pay), is that so little of my time is spent doing optional things any more. I have to choose between necessities that are prioritized. Every minute I would spend teaching is a minute that needs to be spent somewhere else. I have had to hire people to do things I really should be doing, but the realization that I can't do it all forces me to capitulate to reality. This past season I found out that I can no longer stand for 9 hours straight feeding snakes without taking pain pills for my back. I can't help but wonder what I will learn this year that I can no longer do without some crutch or another.

And there just seems to be more to do each day then there used to be. For instance, I was just over in the reptile building feeding some animals, and remember an email I was supposed to send someone last night. But of course, I checked my emails, had a couple to respond to, and checked to see what is going on in my sites, and here I am responding to this message posted a couple of days ago.

Changes are good, that I will get so distracted doing these other things, that I will wind up forgetting the original reason I sat down at the computer and will be back feeding the animals before I remember it! Then the above mentioned cycle will start all over again....

So, let me get that email off before I embarrass myself by forgetting about it again.....

Maybe setting up all these websites really wasn't such a hot idea.