Pastel vs. Spider?

[Ball Clan]

OK I have a choice between two females here. One is a pastel, around 3 to 3.5 feet and ~700 grams. She is priced at $200. Also there is a spider which is larger, around 4 feet, priced at $300. Not sure the weight on her but she is roughly the size of my Kay who has produced 5 clutches for me, so safe to say she's breeding size now.



I'm leaning in the direction of the pastel, as it just seems more attractive to me (the camera doesn't really pick up her color that well). But I'd have to wait to breed her until next year or potentially even the year after. The spider would breed now but the price is higher, and she doesn't do quite as much for me visually.

Given that I have all normals (see my collection here http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...hs-I-have-pics), which do you think would be better as far as producing some interesting babies? I know the genetics of pastels, but not so much on spiders.

Thanks in advance......

[The Serpent Merchant]

Well you are going to have to wait 3 months before breeding with either of them to allow for proper quarinetine.

Personally I would get the spider as it looks like a better representation of the morph.

Breeding a pastel to a normal will produce pastels and normals.

Breeding a spider to a normal will produce spiders and normals.

[Rob]

Well after qt it's all personal preference.

[Ball Clan]

True about the quarantine. The pastel girl has a really pretty yellowish orange hue that the camera doesn't really get. But you think the spider is the better morph? (I don't know really)

[The Serpent Merchant]

Not better morph, but a higher quality specimen of the morph. That pastel has already started to brown out a little more that I would like to see at that size Whereas the spider looks really good.

I think that the pastel morph has more breeding potential than the spider morph does, but if you only have normals now that really doesn't matter. Either a spider or a pastel will be a good foundation for a collection.

All that said, it's all personal preference. If you like that pastel more than the spider, get the pastel. You should get/work with snakes that you like, who cares what other people think.

[Ball Clan]

I suppose that's true.

[DooLittle]

My vote is for the spider.

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[Daybreaker]

I say spider too, I'm not too impressed with the pastel. I would look into other morphs though if you haven't already: there's a lot of single gene females that you can get for around those prices (probably smaller sized but higher quality than both of those two snakes).