"Browning out" question. I need everyone's thoughts.

I wanted to ask this because I'm new to pastels and and I'm seeing some conflicting thoughts concerning this topic.

OK I've heard a lot about pastel individuals "browning out" with age quite a bit since I got my pastel girl back in February. And I've pretty much accepted that she isn't the best quality pastel seeing as how most feedback on her has ranged from neutral to negative, and I'm OK with that. She's a great girl, very tame, eats like a horse, and is in perfect health.

However, I've been looking at a lot of pictures of pastels and it seems to me like almost all of them brown out. Many of the older ones I'm seeing look much less colorful even than mine, and a lot of the sites I'm going on say that this is fairly normal. From what I'm gathering, what I'm seeing with Mocha really doesn't seem that big a deal. In fact, female pastels the size of Mocha on Kingsnake seem to be going for much more than just normals of the same size. Upwards of $500 for even the really browned out ones, if they're females (Of course much more for the brighter ones, but those seem super rare). What are your thoughts on this? I'm not really educated on this so I'm just asking so that I can have a better idea.

By the way this is Mocha, for those who have not seen her. She is about 1100 grams and is assumed to be a 2010 animal.
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f1...0526-01731.jpg

I'm not sure what your question is.

I guess I'm just wondering how many people see browning out as normal among pastels vs. how many are normally selective for the seemingly rare ones that keep their color?

It is normal and common yes, but that doesn't mean that should be the standard. Pastels brown as they age, that is normal. But what you want and should breed for is a color that is held better and longer

Sort of like jungle carpets that hold their yellow rather than fading back?

I have a female pastel. She is a little lighter than yours, but most would say she has "browned out". I don't let that stop me from breeding her. I understand the point of selective breeding, but my browned out Pastel will produce a wide range of offspring. From very yellow to almost no yellow. She produced the Pastave in my profile pic.

Pastels fade/brown out. There are a lot of high end pastels out there and you get what you pay for when buying quality morphs.

So you do think she's worth breeding then? I was thinking along the lines of finding a 2 or 3 gene male with a higher quality pastel in him, like maybe a fire pastel or one of the "bee" morphs.

At the very least she is very healthy, is a great pet (super tame), and has and is growing quickly. She has put on about 200-250 grams in the 3 months I've had her. She seems to have the potential to be a large adult capable of large clutches, so I feel like she will be of use if I can get the right partner for her.

Ahh the dreaded browned out pastel debate.

Ok, to attempt to make a long, drawn out story a little shorter.

Once upon a time, when ball pythons morphs were rare and very expensive, what few pastels there were didn't always turn dark brown as they aged. Some stayed bright yellowish tan, and a very few stayed yellow. Now, since pastels are what is called a co-dom morph, meaning that roughly half of the offspring will be pastel, people eager to get rich quickly started breeding these bright pastels to any other ball python to make more pastels. No one really cared what these looked like, they were a morph and therefore worth money. As more and more pastels became available, more and more were being bred to anything to make more pastels. The babies were not being selectively bred to stay bright, they were simply bred as fast as possible to make money, and who cares what they looked like.

As this continued a downward spiral, pastels became cheaper and cheaper and more and more available to people who thought breeding ball pythons was the next big money maker. So lower and lower quality animals were purchased by people who had no clue what they were doing, and the cycle continued. Today everybody and their grandmother has pastels. Usually dark yellow and orange as babies, and so brown as adults, they can scarcely be told from a normal. Only a very few cared enough about the animals to keep selectively breeding for bright pastels, and not to make a quick buck. So yes, dark pastels are very common, and bright animals are few and far between.

Now, about your own snake. yes she's brown, but not as much as many I have seen. She has a nice overall light color, and some very nice blushing. She's got a good faded head, and her lower sides are nice and light with yellow in them still. I would call her a solid B- pastel. Not as nice as some, but certainly as nice or nicer than a lot on the market. As far as breeding goes, just pick out the brightest and best males for her. A really bright lesser, a light fire, a high gold enchi, a bright mojave, there are lots of possibilities!

Gale

They all brown it's a matter of how much. I have seen some that look like normals and some that still look fairly clean.

Here are some adul tpastels and you can see a variance in amount of brown.

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...09PastelHG.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w...ndieoneggs.jpg
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w.../WithPatsy.jpg

That second one looks a lot like mine.