THE HISTORY BEHIND T and J's:

T and J's began back in the early spring of 2004 with four simple, desperate words: "My mother hates snakes." About two weeks after uttering that phrase to Tim, we had our very first cornsnake, a female snow, that we named Pearl. It was a decision that saved our marriage and sparked an addiction that quickly morphed from a small collection of neat looking cornsnakes into a breeding colony full of a diverse array of snakes and genetics.

After Pearl, when we first started adding snakes to our collection, we picked them up because we'd found some small trait or personality quirk that we fell in love with. Early in 2006, when we seriously began adding to our collection with the intent to breed our snakes, we began selecting snakes based upon the genes that they carried, instead of just looks alone. That's not to say that the look of an animal didn't contribute to our choices, it's just that we spent more time researching each animal's history before purchasing.

Additionally the snakes that we have added to the breeding stock are in excellent condition, health wise. All of them are eating and growing steadily, something we've come to appreciate after dealing with a small handful of weak individuals that never thrived.

WHERE WE STAND NOW:

We have just finished our fourth year of breeding, seven of eight clutches hatched out during the months of July and August giving us around 107 hatchlings. (An average of approximately 15.2 hatchlings per clutch.). We are also planning ahead and plotting our fifth and sixth year breeding plans (2010 and 2011 respectively). All future pairings are subject to last minute changes, with alternate males and females lined up on the off chance that one animal or another shows no interest.

To date, we've dealt with a small dose of some of the harsher sides of breeding; Minor prolapse, egg binding, a premature death due to eggbinding, D.I.E. (Dead In Egg) hatchlings, excessively long incubation periods, and double clutches. We're also learning the joys of raising dozens of hatchlings at the same time - something we seem to get loads of experience with each year. This is in addition to an assortment of other problems (such as mites, scale rot, and difficult sheds).

OUR PLANS FOR THE FUTURE:

In the past, the majority of our breedings were planned with the need to learn more about the genetics of some of our older snakes as opposed to breeding for a specific morph. Now, we will start shifting our focus to producing a few cutting edge morphs, though there will also be a few test breedings to prove out the genetics of some of our snakes. The goal, as always though, is to produce healthy hatchlings with good appetites.

The 2010 season will see our third attempt to breed our San Luis Potosi kingsnakes for the first time. The first two failing due to our males being uninterested and a touch on the small side when compared to the female. We are really looking forward to this pairing as the mountain kings have always fascinated us with their calm dispositions and small stature.

Since we have begun branching out, no longer limiting our interests to just cornsnakes (though they will always be our main focus), we now have a small handful of kingsnakes, a few Kenyan sand boas, several emoryi, a couple of Baird's ratsnakes, two ball pythons, and a couple of milksnakes in our breeding stock. As time goes by, we plan to add; a couple more different types of kings, a few more milks, and possibly a few other ratsnakes as well.

 

T and J's Cornsnakes is owned and operated by and is currently based out of Southern California, though there are plans in the makings to relocate in the hopefully near future.

The information on this page was last updated on 10-05-09.