i guess thats how projects are made tho.. 2.6/7/8 etc

__________________
NEW 2009 payment plan.. see here
http://www.reptileforums.co.uk/snake...s-savings.html

Well of course... by upping the odds of producing tripple homo animals from normals with hets, you need a lot of chances...

__________________

You`re not far wrong.
I`ve sorted 4 pairs in total to go out this year, and everyone who agreed to a lone male has been sorted with a female. Still waiting on the second clutch of which most females will be keepers, as i really want to improve my chances of getting the honey stripes, and the others will be sold as simply Carolinas into the pet trade. Sound a little harsh but hey, thats how it goes if you want to get what you want. I aim to keep a 2.5/6 depending on what i get.....and just gotta hope i don`t mix the labels up lol

__________________

fair play for being honest there.
i bet you cant believe you got 40 eggs from such a cheap female? lol..

__________________
NEW 2009 payment plan.. see here
http://www.reptileforums.co.uk/snake...s-savings.html

No i really can`t! She has got to have been my bargain of the year
In a way i really wish she didn`t double clutch though. It sounds really awful but although i wanted het honey stripes, i wasn`t counting on that many. Just gives me loads of babies that i don`t really want to be selling, but really can`t keep either

Want to put her to an amber stripe next year..now she has full permission to double clutch on that one

__________________

makes sense.
if i decide to follow up these 2 projects i am waiting on hatching, then i will also keep a heavier ratio of females.
that should allow me to quite easily make hypo opal blood stripes and opal caramel stripes if that one is worth doing i'm not so sure yet.

__________________
NEW 2009 payment plan.. see here
http://www.reptileforums.co.uk/snake...s-savings.html

To me, the hets ARE an important reason to buy a snake. It's all well and good to say we should buy homozygous morphs - or homozygous "ingredients" to produce what we want and do it from scratch... but for those of us with limited cage space, buying a pair that has the potential to produce what we want is better than buying half a dozen ingredients and having twelve years to wait

I like breeding snakes, and I like the idea of rainbow clutches - but on the other hand, I only have so much space for adult snakes, and I get attached to my animals, so selling them on is difficult at best. This year I got an at-least-triple-homozygous male offspring from a triple het single homozygous pair - but it would have been very difficult if I'd had to buy an Amel Stripe het Anery and a Lavender Anerythristic to start with, then keep the first generation of offspring, then breed them back... because that's more cage space than I have had spare in the last three years. I had room for one pair when I got Mica and Zircon, but not two or more.

In future I'll have more space - and will be planning more ambitious projects - but I must admit I like ready-labelled hets!

__________________
- Ssthisto





Lizards: 2.1 E. macularius1.2 H. caudicinctus1.0 R. ciliatus0.3 A. fragilis1.1 T. merianae1.0 V. niloticus ittibittiusColubrids: 6.8.6 P. guttattus1.0 P. guttatus X E. climacophora1.1 P. o. rossalini1.0 P. o. lindheimeri0.1 E. anomala0.1 C. radiatus0.2 Lamprophis spp1.0 L. g. nigritus0.1 L. g. californiae1.0 H. n. nasicus1.0 P. m. melanoleucusBoids: 1.1 E. c. maurus 0.1 E. conicus10.14.4 P. regius1.1 A. maculosa
We HAD a three-bedroom house... Current lodgers: 1.0 E. c. maurus, 0.1 P. regius

Anything stripy sound good to me What does an opal caramel look like?

__________________

I read this with interest, as I had missed this new policy, even though I do buy from Serpenco in various ways many times a year. I have chatted with Rich over the last couple of weeks and he is making no excuses for problems like no 2008 price list yet and a few other issues - just not enough hours in the day he says!

I sincerely understand this worry from a breeders point of view, especially those focused on the production of cutting edge Corn snake morphs, and I dont see it as cheating or cutting corners. By using hets to get to the morph they want, they will still be at least two years behind the big money spinning beginning surge of interest. Thats just how the game works. This year small amount of XYZ visual morph worth $1k, two years everything has moved on same morph more accesible and worth about half that or less. I have no hang up personally at all about people wanting to know hets for this purpose - and I have to question why Rich has taken this decision knowing that.

For that reason I need to take off my hobbyist head and put my business head back on. In some ways this could be a reaction to lack of support from the hobbyists - he has said so much with his comments about the wholesalers. To supply "joe public" (breeders etc) can sometimes be a thankless and tiresome task, and perhaps the constant barrage of "Serpenco did this / that / the other" when looking at the profit and loss / balance sheet made him consider selling more into the wholesale market place. Half a dozen customers who take from him high amounts, without the complaints, whereas the public sector (breeders) has dwindled. I have seen the breeders do this themselves - "I wont buy XYZ breeder stock cos I think its too expensive" whilst wanting top dollar for their newer morphs. Perhaps Rich, some where along the lines, especially now he's a little older (he's not an old guy like one poster said!) and thinking of taking life a little easier, started to sell to the wholesalers because he had little choice due to lack of support sales from the breeders. Sort of use it or lose it sort of thing. And now he has got used to selling to the wholesalers over the pond (I buy Serpenco stock through them at a cheaper rate than buying direct) he has realised it fits in with want he wants. Another issue when running a business is the realisation that staff will never do as good a job as you will. Perhaps this fact, when weighing up his own pride has had some affect on his decision. Maybe he has had experience of bringing staff into the business to find his standards are then lost. Further, more general things to consider are the slide into recession that the world economic market seems to want to ignore. Everyone who has a business is looking at this at the moment, and anyone with any sense is making changes to their business to make sure they survive the doom and gloom that undoubtedly is looming. I first noticed this in the States when at the 2006 Expo in Florida. It was the Royal Python symposium show, where everyone who was anybody in morphs of Royals (Sorry Ball) showed off their stock. By the end of the weekend there were many sad faces as realisation that hardly any had sold - there just isnt that kind of money about, people who can afford them are few and far between. Now we are further into the recession its hitting the "cheaper" morphs such as Corn's - maybe there just isnt the high demand for them like there was five or six years ago. Again, time to rely on the wholesalers. So, whether you agree with Riches decision or not, perhaps its time to look at it differently and realise some of the issues he will have dealt with that have influenced his decision.

I am hoping to meet up with Rich this year away from the Expo, we are both big Corvette fans and have plenty in common away from the snakes. Maybe he will give me a better insight then. But I wont be too surprised if some of the points above are brought into the conversation. Running a good quality reptile business is not as easy as it looks.

__________________
Coast to Coast Exotics www.coasttocoast.co.uk
Legendary reptile breeder and shop
Zoo Logic UK Ltd - Importer/exporter/wholesaler.
http://www.zoo-logic.co.uk/

totally agree
no idea, not sure if its a vaible option yet

__________________
NEW 2009 payment plan.. see here
http://www.reptileforums.co.uk/snake...s-savings.html