Dictating morph attributes

I know that it's been said this is a business where being in the know with other top breeders is the key to success but I'm slightly unsure what that means and to what extent. Justin Kolbylka mentions game changing morphs that are never released to the general public on his site. The reason I started this thread though is to find out if any one would share their cook books so to speak. There are 2 different things that this could mean. One is pairings that make the most financial sense to produce the best clutches and least amount of normals, I am not talking about this right now. The second would be passing on visual characteristics to the animals. What are you guys doing as far as breeding to enhance certain projects? I plan on starting several projects operating under the impression that I'm going to have to introduce some seemingly random genetics into the mix in order to produce what I want. For example do you think that NERD's Lemon Pastel is a product of Pastel to Pastel for years on end or could it be Pastel to "gene X" babies bred to "Pastel gene X" to Pastel or something along those lines. I'm wanting to build a really solid collection for the future and while planning these projects I'm having a hard time finding any information on this sort of stuff besides the common knowledge on the genes and what they have a tendency to do. For instance I think that line breeding the characteristics of a Black Pastel Yellow Belly back into the Black Pastels could really enhance a programs Black Pastels after so many generation.

What a loaded question. I myself have never bred anything outside the ordinary but i would assume it would be a matter of trial and error to find something different and unique to your own brand. That being said, these high end breeders have access to far more variety and unique snakes with which to breed into their projects than the average buyer that that buys 1 or 2 snakes at a time. I guess you would really need a keen eye and a fat checkbook to be able to snatch up unique project snakes to incorporate into your collection. I believ selective breeding can only go so far in ball pythons and having a project like that would make more sense financially and entertainment-wise as a backburner project rather than being your main goal.

But then again this is my opinion from the outside looking in so what do i know [emoji12]

I think that selectively breeding some morphs leads to having a excellent line of that morph, without any secret hidden genes being introduced. So if you bred pastels, but you only held back and used the very best pastels that produced only most excellent pastels, your "line" of pastels would be some very amazing pastels. So your diligence in only breeding the best would create a line of uber awesome pastels, and someone who sees mostly "okay" pastels might suspect that you have some hidden secret stash of special snakes that you added in to make your pastels "pop" better genetically.

That said, there are a lot of morphs that don't look spectacular themselves but they up the ante with whatever morph they're added to. Like adding a fire to a pastel makes a really cool animal, even though the first doesn't look like a pastel and is a separate gene. Some genes seem to combine in weird ways to give you something that looks unrelated, like luecistic snakes from snakes that to a non-hobbyist eye look like regular normal ball pythons. Cinnamons produce the solid chocolate super cinnamon and such.

I'm certain that most breeders that are super successful have a few tricks up their sleeves. But I'm also fairly certain that it's their ability to pick and choose breeder snakes that helps them produce such excellent animals in the end. When you only have ten snakes, and a small budget and only access to a typical show to buy from, you might have to "settle" for lower quality animals(although still superb!) than someone who might have hundreds of snakes, a large budget and access to all shows AND other large breeders that they do swaps/trades/projects together with.

The idea of keeping back only the best of each clutch is done by all breeders but not all breeders make Lemon Pastels... NERD has the Bald morph, it's snakes like that. I mean I can by name tell you a handful of breeders that have significantly different/brighter looking snakes then all the hundreds of other breeders out there who practice line breeding by means of holding back the best year after year. I guess after a few years I will just have to do some interacting to figure it better. I do plan on starting several projects though to see if I can come up with something. As you said though this adds several more years onto ever planning on making money off of Ball Pythons since I will have less resources going into breeding for the most popular genes. Plus I'll probably be doing a lot of mixing around and using normals. Kevin's interview on youtube eludes to something similar when he said he thinks people will notice more genes popping up in their collections but he never said what genes. I'm also confused on whether or not I can make one of these "clean up" snakes or whatever attribute just from snakes that I pick up here and there without and wild caught.