Getting Started

I have been looking into breeding for a long time now, but one thing I just can't make a decision on is what I should start with. I spoke to Brian from BHB and he recommended Banana ball pythons. This would be great to do, but I would need a female and females tend to be so expensive (I keep seeing 600+) since they're more rare. I've been thinking about getting at least a codom gene. My male is a normal ball python with a lot of clean tan on his tail and white that lifts up a little on his sides pretty nicely, so I've also thought of trying to bring that out in some way.

What would you suggest?

If you want to make bananas, get yourself some females. They don't need to be female bananas. Banana is a codom too. Grab a couple girls and a male banana combo

I always suggest starting out with hatchling females and taking a couple of years to grow them up, adding a male a year or so down the road, and learn everything you possibly can about them while doing so. It certainly doesn't give people the immediate results that they often want, but there's nothing that can replace the experience, knowledge gained, and reward you get from seeing eggs hatch that were laid by animals you raised from hatchlings themselves. :gj:

Bananas are great looking snakes. Second morph I picked up. If you have a male normal my suggestion is to find a co-dom female, possibly a multi-gene girl. That would give you the most variety of offspring with immediate visual results. Your male will obviously not add to the mix as far as morphs. For example if you picked up a Pastave (mojave x pastel) or even a Pastave Yellow Belly, you could produce Mojaves, Pastels, Pastaves, Mojave YB, Pastel YB, and Pastave YB, as well as normals. All of those are good base morphs to work from IMO. I'm not saying do this, it's just an example of what you could do. You have to decide what paint jobs to work with and what appeals to you within your current budget and space. Hope that helps.

Dave

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Bananas are great looking snakes. Second morph I picked up. If you have a male normal my suggestion is to find a co-dom female, possibly a multi-gene girl. That would give you the most variety of offspring with immediate visual results. Your male will obviously not add to the mix as far as morphs. For example if you picked up a Pastave (mojave x pastel) or even a Pastave Yellow Belly, you could produce Mojaves, Pastels, Pastaves, Mojave YB, Pastel YB, and Pastave YB, as well as normals. All of those are good base morphs to work from IMO. I'm not saying do this, it's just an example of what you could do. You have to decide what paint jobs to work with and what appeals to you within your current budget and space. Hope that helps.

Dave

Imo keep the normal male as a pet and do not breed him....the market is flooded with normals and a male normal has zero breeding value....I would do what eric suggested and pickup some hatchling females on the more basic genes that You like...you can find multi gene females of basic genes for under 200. Then next year or the year after buy a powerful multi gene male and go from there. I wish I had someone to tell me this when I first started....I would have saved alot of time and money doing it that way. Best of luck.

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i can t believe Brian advise you to buy a banana girl!!!! First as say frosty don t breed a normal male except if he has really odd pattern or color (dinker).

Second if you want to start breeding you need to identify your hachlings targets. what do you like. For me banana is a poor morph that age badly , just very high hands combos are great and out of your budget ( banana pied, banana clown...) with exceptions of enchi banana and cinny/black pastel banana combos.

third always buy females first as they need 3 years average to get ready while male just needs 6month to 1 year.

So i will advice few morphs that you could check on for pictures and no something that i have in stock and want to sell you:

Enchi
Fire
Lesser/butter
mojave
orange dream
leopard

but if you have those 600$ to put on a single animal then you can go :
recessive genes:
desert ghost
clown
lavender albino
ultramel

co dom and dom combos:
firefly enchi
bumblebee enchi
lesser leopard
mojave leopard
orange dream fire
orange dream Yellow belly
dreambee
crystal
firefly spotnose
superpastel enchi

Normal males are great pets but breeding them makes very little sense especially considering the prices of 2 and 3 genes males nowadays.

So get a female of YOUR choice that fits YOUR budget raise her up and in about a year, year and a half by a male (the most gene you can afford at that time)

I won't tell you what to buy and you should not let other people's taste dictate what to buy either, just remember that YOU will be the one caring for that animal and that YOU will be the one breeding it.

My only advice don't put all your eggs in the same basket if you only buy one female and she does not take or slugs out, your first season would than be a big disapointment.

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I'd have to agree with the above posts. I was going on the premise that you wanted to breed your normal male to a new female. If you are doing it for the experience and not for the $$$ I don't see anything wrong with that.

Dave

Man, it wasn't that long ago when Banana BPs were going for tens of thousands of dollars.

Yes, bananas where super expensive because of there looking as babies. People didn t see white smoke: the first coral glow that NERD has imported. So people over estimate the morph. Since buying a snake include taking care of it during 25/30 years and not just the 2 first years when the banana/coral glow is very stunning i would say it s not a top pick morph. Same as a bumblebee. Some morph aged much better: lavender albino, desert ghost, enchi combos, orange dream combos. Honestly, i prefer my cinnies and black pastel combos than my banana. and they are between 3 and 4 years old.

but for breeders, it s different if you have a great animals to breed to banana then it s a different story. i saw banana blade clown and a banana lesser clown... those are wicked snakes. I guess HGW enchi banana should be nice too.

I m not hypocrit , i breed banana to cinnies and black pastel to finance my other project because it s still very fashionable here but i always show picture of the parents. And i will never advice banana morph to a guy which want get started with few females and a single male. And i don t see the point to advice a beginner to buy a female banana except to ge rid of a hard to sell animal.