When I started on corns I'd had a couple BPs and a cali king for a few years. I had been around corns and liked them, and they were affordable enough that I could actually get several different morphs. Originally I just wanted to have one of each of the 5 or 6 morphs, LOL. I spent a couple years shopping for the absolutely most attractive examples of each morph and hand-picked everything I bought because I planned on having only that individual. (When you plan on breeding, you tend to not care as much if the individual is "pretty" as long as it has the genes you want.) When I had 5 of them (normal, miami, amel, anery, snow) they decided to start breeding.
That was when I decided if I was going to have breeders, they might as well produce something cool, so I started looking into all the genetics and absorbing as much as I could. It was also then that I knew it wouldn't be possible to keep them all in big glass tanks so I switched over to sterilite for each new one I picked up. I only got a few, wanted to get just enough so that I could produce any genetic combination I wanted from my own stock. This would give me a reason to not run out and buy a bunch of them. It also gave me the opportunity to, again, be extremely picky about which individuals I added to my gene pool.
The next year I bred 4 of my females, produced 42 hatchlings and sold them all to a wholesaler. But one of them looked very interesting so I bought it back from the wholesaler. Since then, I have been keeping them and feeding them until someone decides to buy them. I sold a handful to a pet shop once, but other than that I haven't done any wholesaling.
I get ones that absolutely refuse to eat, and I don't feel bad about feeding them to the kingsnake because, chances are, if I put in all kinds of effort to get them feeding and they grow up to breed, they will only revive the same dilemma by producing more of the same thing. I don't see this as a good thing when there are much more healthy, friendly, "domesticated" hatchlings to work with instead. In the long haul it is overall beneficial to cull the picky feeders.
If I don't have too many hatchlings to deal with (I think my max at a time has been 60) then I enjoy watching them color up and grow up. So I'm in no hurry to get rid of them and will not sell them for a penny less than what I think they're worth. I don't think that "bargain hunters"--who are looking to save a whopping five dollars on a one time purchase of something they should have for 20 years--are the best hands to be feeding my "kids" anyway. I think I've learned a lot about the differences in hatchlings/yearlings from the experience, as far as what to pick as keepers. Ones that I'd originally thought would make amazing keepers were, a year later, ones I would not want to have offspring from.
What made me say, "Self?" and my self to say, "What?" was that I find myself having to "hurry" through feeding and cleaning in order to get it done. I love to spend 15 minutes or more with each and every individual, but now find myself saying, "I have to put this one back because I have to get to the next one." That's just not cool. The hobby is supposed to be a stress releiver, not a cause of stress, and it has started to cross that line for me. I still spend lots of time with each one because they all deserve my time and effort. At 3-4 an hour, it often takes me the entire weekend to get through feeding. They all have names and I know them all individually, but they take more time than I want them to at this point. I have a bunch of possible hets that I've raised up to breeding age this year, so once I find who is het for what, I can thin down again to where I'm in a much happier zone and feel like a hobbyist.
I think that, if you are planning on it ONLY being a hobby and NOT a business, it's one way to find your "critical mass." Ask yourself, "Self? How much time do I enjoy spending with each individual?" Divide that into the amount of time you wish to spend
each and every week with the hobby, and that should give you a number. Then figure out how many you can add each year without going over critical mass, and count on hatching some that you want to keep. That is, if your magic number is 20, and you have 20 adult breeders, you're screwed... LOL.
