What were your first projects? How did you get into breeding?

Hello there!
My husband and I are fairly new to ball pythons and have 3 sweet little babies, all only about 1 month old (0.1 normal, 1.1 butters).
We hope to breed a few years out from now, and plan on expanding our collection very soon.
We want to be very project minded, starting out simply, purchasing animals who we hope to invest in years before they ever breed, as well as for pure enjoyment of the species!
That being said, I was wondering what some of your first breeding projects were and how you got started? What were your first pairings and how many did you start out with?
My husband and I would be very small scale, breeding and keeping snakes more for our own enjoyment and hobbies sake.
Currently, with our 2 little butters, we'd like to someday produce more butters as well as BELS. We hope to purchase a mojave and perhaps a lesser as part of that project. But we'd like to have another project or two in mind as well, and I was wondering what input you could offer in terms of getting started with long-term breeding projects, pairing, personal experiences, etc.
It's been wonderful reading all of the encouragement, advice and overall helpfulness in answering questions for those, who like me, are interested in breeding one day!

i haven't bred yet, but i plan to as a hobby and to make my own animals that i can't afford. i got my Mojave, Butter-Mojave and Leopard Pastel girls getting up to size and will be my first to go. it's so exciting to see all the pix of the cute lil babies piping and i wanna experience that myself. :)

yes, i agree on adding a Mojave. it's better to pair a Mojave to your Butter. Super Butters/Lessers are prone to bug eye issues. A Butter/Lesser-Mojave BEL still produces a blue-eye, all white snake and doesn't have the same issues.

i think having a BEL-complex project sounds great. get at least a two-gene animal like a Banana Mojave or Cinnamon Special. i also love Leopards. u can also have a long-term project and get a some visual or het recessive animals - Albino, Clown, Pied, etc.

just my thoughts but in the end, produce and breed what u like and think is beautiful. have fun, good luck!

I've been in the world of ball pythons since January 2008 and this NEXT year will be my first attempt at breeding. I have a normal male and mojo girl that are up to breeding size now. However my plans with the normal don't include the mojo.

My plan is a small hobby business, to be honest more to add to my collection than to sell but I am project minded also and have certain morphs that I want to add to my collection.

Anything you want to do I can't praise the Mojave high enough, just a stunning animal and it'll work with almost any gene!

Good luck! Keep us updated!


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You really have to decide what you like if you are producing animals for yourself. In the BEL complex, Phantom and Special do nice things. I am partial to pinstripes but not everyone likes them. Then there is Enchi. As the saying goes, everything looks better with Enchi.

I got started in 2005 my first animals we started with were a pair of Het pieds, 1.1 pastels, 1.0 spiders and 0.1 Mojaves. I started breeding because I wanted to produce Pieds.

Strangely I got into breeding tortoises but decided to add Bp to the list since I can start breeding them at the same time. Tortoises should be absolute minimum 6 years old before you breed them and my girls aren't even old enough to tell the gender yet. I might actually end up with a clutch of BP before I get a clutch of torts because of the relative ages and safe breeding ages of the different species.

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Originally Posted by JodanOrNoDan

You really have to decide what you like if you are producing animals for yourself. In the BEL complex, Phantom and Special do nice things. I am partial to pinstripes but not everyone likes them. Then there is Enchi. As the saying goes, everything looks better with Enchi.

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I can't do anything but agree with Enchi!

Between Enchi, Mojave, Pastel Mystic Potion... Wonder what I'm gonna cook up [emoji12]


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My first four females were a Butter Pastel, an Enchi, a Spinner Blast, and a Sugar. My first male was an Enchi Fire YB. I still have all of these in my collection.

What got me into it? I think the better question is what took me so dang long to get into it!

Haven't bred yet but I'm set up for BELs and working toward a Blackhead Banana. But I haven't even gotten a Banana yet and all my females are younger. So in the meantime while I get a Banana and let her grow I'll just mix black heads and butters and hopefully make some cool stuff! I haven't seen that yet on wob other than a bh butter ghost (which I can make) so maybe I'll build a light box and submit some pictures

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I started out breeding garter snakes and kingsnakes 8 years ago. Then, in 2010 I bought my first ball python, albino female and the rest is history. My next purchases were a pair of piebalds.