As expected the snakes have awakened from their little "brumation" and are now looking to mate. I don't really brumate mine per se, I just turn off the heat to their enclosures and withhold food from about Christmas until Valentine's day. Those couple months are kind of nice in that I have hardly any poop to clean and I don't feed the adults. I keep the babies warm and continue normal feedings, so it's not like I have nothing to do, far from it actually.
Around Valentine's day I turn the heat back on in the adult's enclosures and allow them to warm up for a couple days before offering their first meal. They all pretty much devour that first meal as well as a second meal the week after. Eventually the females will shed and once that's done I introduce the males to the female's cage. Hopefully I see some breeding activity and not homicidal or cannibalistic behavior.
Knock on wood, my animals typically will get down to business without trying to kill or eat each other...so far. That said it is always a little nerve racking when I first start pairing them up. I will be pairing the same animals again this year as I did last year. I had some really great results in my opinion and see no reason to change things up this year. But in a couple years my holdbacks form last season will be of age and I will start to mix and match some stuff. The only drawback to this is I will probably produce a lot of hets and fewer visual animals that way. But in the long run it should set me up with more combinations of traits. Time will tell.
