How long do you keep your leads and breeding males?

How long do you keep your leads and breeding males before retiring or changing them?

the subject has me curious because it seems many of the top studs are retired and replaced with their offspring as soon as the offspring grow. 

In my own discussions with players regarding breeding projects etc, I’ve noticed other people seem far more eager than I am to move on from their leads and breeding males. While I understand the motivation, the thought of cycling thru them so much prior to their old age doesn’t quite sit right with me—especially if the lead has not even reached level 20 yet

what are your motivations behind either keeping them as long as you can or replacing early?

I'm not looking to breed for specific things, like stats or markings and such. So when my lead/breeding male dies, that is when I'll change mine. 

I’m more lore motivated than money or leaderboard motivated, so I’ll be waiting for mine to die of old age. 

I'm mostly just waiting for them to die off too, I want to replace my lead at least with a puppy of my current pair so I'm hoping to get them both to a high level for good stats in the puppy (who I'll take from probably their last litter)

I usually let them age out unless I got lots of funds to handle replacing, though I do have an entire custom pack plan at the moment that's sitting pretty at 400gc in customization and replacement fees.

I'll be waiting for mine to die of old age. 

For the Leader this is just because I want my Leader around as long as possible. I like her and want her to remain my player character! And for lore reasons I want the next leader to be the daughter of my present leader. So I'll breed her when she's getting old and choose her heir from that litter. And so on and so forth!

For breeding male it's a different story. Ideally I would rather swap them out every two to three weeks TBH, but that would be insanely expensive and I don't have that kind of money. So I'll be appointing a new male when the existing one dies. And my new male will be between 6 years 3 months old and 6 years 6 months old when I appoint him as breeding male. That will allow plenty of time for the heirs to grow and get stats up too, and minimize the amount of babies each male will produce, so a win-win-win imo.

Till death to old age - I'm a lore player and the idea of retiring wolves early makes me sad.

If I was rolling in GC and had a male I very much preferred genetics-wise over my current breeder I'd swap them (not retiring the breeder in the process, he'd just become a pack member), but neither of those things are currently true, so.

Till old age for sure -- both because 1) I'm a lore player and I get attached (and may or may not immortalize one or two of my founders once they do get old) and 2) I've spent enough on customizing all of my permanent wolves to varying degrees and I'm not just going to throw 'em out now >( 

I've spent 38 GC on my breeding male, he'll stay right where he is til he earns them back + the money for him to step down and customize a new, better wolf. 

I won't retire him tho, he'll just become a normal pack member, he's still my baby. 

Until the moon falls out of the sky and trees stop growing (or until he dies/retires. whichever comes first.)