A beginner question, I'm sure...

So, we just got our first ball python, and we're totally loving it! He's a great little snake. So we were considering eventually breeding - not anytime soon, mind you, we want to get everything set up and researched right! and I had a question I couldn't get out of my mind.

Our snake has a stripe from a little past his middle, all the way to the end of his tail. Is this a pattern that could be encouraged with breeding...like, is this how pinstripes started off? Would it be a good idea to breed him to a pinstripe, or another normal that has a partial stripe pattern? I'm just too curious for my own good. ^^;;

Congrats on your first, it will not be your last!

You can breed to encourage dorsal striping and to me at least, breeding a dorsal striped normal to a pinstripe would make sense (mind you I don't have personal experience with that). But that is not how pinstripes started- I'll let someone else explain that lol


When it comes down to breeding, breed animals that have the qualities you like.

Awesome! Yeah, I really like his dorsal stripe. :) I almost want to breed just normals, at least at first...partially because I don't know crap about all the morphs and I don't want to mess anything up, and partially because I don't think normals get enough love. :-P

Another question, that someone here can probably answer - Data, the male snake we have now, is two years old. If we wanted to get a baby female ball python to maybe breed eventually, would they be compatible? Or would the age difference be an issue?

An age difference doesn't matter to snakes when it comes to breeding.
As long as your female is up to size and the snakes feel like going at it they will do their thing ;)

Great! We adopted Data, and adoption is great great great - but I admit, I want to be selfish at least once and start with a baby and raise it. :)

Breeding normals wouldn't be any different than morphs. It'll take a couple years so you couldn't really mess much up by then when you learn all the genetics and combos.

Pinstripes are a co-dominant or dominant trait (without a proven homozygous form) in ball pythons that was discovered in a shipment from Africa (like most morphs). Genetic traits have to exist already for the most part, you can selectively breed for better looking traits of each morph but no morph has come out of selectively breeding to my knowledge.

Oh, I see! That's completely different than what I was thinking, wow. Good to know.