My 'powerhouse' male Monty. Any suggestions for mates?

Since this is one of my first posts on this forum I figured I'd say a little bit about myself before I show off my little buddy Monty. I first got into this hobby some 6-7 years ago when I was too young to be able to afford any crazy morphs. I got out of the hobby for a few years but am now back into the hobby as much as I was when I first got into the hobby. I've been lurking around on a few forums for the past couple years and it seems like many forums activity has decreased by quite a bit. I'm not sure if this is because there are less people interested in the hobby now, if there are less new people getting into the hobby or if it could just mean that forums have become kind of passe but in any case it's a little disheartening. I've been meaning to make an introduction post to a few forums but it just doesn't seem like there is enough of a community on most of them to make it worth it. This forum seems to have one of the most active communities and it is specifically meant for ball pythons so I figured I'd give it a shot here and finally introduce myself a little bit.

So anyway, onto the snake :cool:

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f1...psvvlz3bra.jpg

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f1...pstflgjayw.jpg



Those two are of him when he was a lot younger

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f1...pskipztpdk.jpg

This is much more recent

Monty (named by my dad lol) is an orange dream, enchi, pastel, yellowbelly I picked up from urban python at the CRBE in Toronto last year. I didn't just pick him up because of how gorgeous he was but also because of the potential I saw in him. Although that potential is kind of a problem now. I'm not sure what kind of females I want to get for him lol. Right now I only have a 'dinker' (probably just a really nice normal) proven breeder female that I'm going to try and pair with him this season but I want to get a few females that I can pair with him in the future to make some amazing babies. What I was thinking about was something like a fire, spider, orange dream and maybe an orange dream blade clown. I was eying a fire, spider, orange dream for awhile so I know how much that should run me but I have no idea how much something like an orange dream blade clown would go for. Another possibility I was thinking of was some sort of yellow belly complex animal but as far as I know it's pretty much impossible to differentiate them from yellow bellies in a clutch and I'd expect that gets even worse when you add more genes.

So yeah, any suggestions (or an idea of the price of an orange dream blade clown) would be awesome!

A combination with a Blue Eyed Lucestic gene (Mojave or Mystic/Phantom) would compliment his genes well. You could also go the pattern route with a Pinstripe combination. And recessive is always good, Clown and Pied are the first two that come to mind with his genetics.

Beautiful Ball you have there.

Sent from my SGH-T999

Very nice! My vote would be for an enchi, pastel or fire/sulfur combo!

I would go with a clown/ clown combo female to breed him with. But my collection is heavily skewed towards clowns :)

Thanks everyone for the suggestions!!!

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Originally Posted by Slowcountry Balls

A combination with a Blue Eyed Lucestic gene (Mojave or Mystic/Phantom) would compliment his genes well. You could also go the pattern route with a Pinstripe combination. And recessive is always good, Clown and Pied are the first two that come to mind with his genetics.

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I'd love to get some sort of combo with mojave or phantom some day to plug into him. Can you imagine what an enchi orange dream purple passion would look like? Even just a mojave enchi orange dream would be amazing. I'm actually not a huge fan of pinstripe or pied, though banana pieds look amazing. If I was going to go with something recessive I'd probably go with a clown combo or maybe like a desert ghost fire but that'd be way out of my price range unfortunately.

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Originally Posted by tacticalveterinarian

Very nice! My vote would be for an enchi, pastel or fire/sulfur combo!

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If I get any female orange dream enchis or pastel orange dream enchis from him next year I'm definitely going to hold them back to try and make a triple super one day (even though the odds are astronomically small). Yeah I definitely want to get some sort of fire female it's too bad the fire orange dream spider got sold before I could get it :( Oh well, there will be more. Any suggestions on a fire combo I should get other than the one I mentioned?

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Originally Posted by DTK

I would go with a clown/ clown combo female to breed him with. But my collection is heavily skewed towards clowns :)

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Yep clowns are amazing! Easily my favorite recessive morph. Plus blades tend to be somewhat cheap around here so I'll probably try for a super blade clown if I don't find an orange dream blade clown or if it ends up being too expensive.

I figure this kind of thing always revolves around what kind of budget you have. I'd say to get at least 3 girls for him, you already have one normal to breed him too so at least 2 others. I'd go for one female with a gene in the yellowbelly complex, every another yellowbelly would be good just to get ivory, pastel ivory, enchi ivory, etc. It would be hard to tell what was just plain yellowbelly with all the other genes but I don't think that would stop me. If this was a BEL gene I probably would though.

A clown combo sounds great too, but I'd probably only get a clown combo if I could afford it along with at least one other snake. I wouldn't want to blow my budget and then have the clown female just not care about locking or just not ovulating. Leopard is another gene I think would look good with that male.

Of course the higher the budget I'd probably add 1-3 more females, but I'd also start looking for females like what I said, just adding a few genes here and there.

Yeah this does make sense. The reason why I'd want to buy an expensive clown combo over a more reasonable clown plus a couple other morphs basically amounts to me still living at home and my parents not wanting too many animals lol and when I mentioned something in the yellowbelly complex I more so meant like a specter or a gravel or something but due to it being pretty difficult to spot them in a clutch and me still being fairly inexperienced when it comes to breeding I think I'm going to stick to a clown combo and something with fire. I love everything that I've seen with super orange dream thus far so that's why I was thinking spider, fire, orange dream but I think that also has a lot to do with me seeing it recently. It just depends on what I end up seeing that screams "You need to take me home!!!".