Breeding for things besides markings?

Has anybody heard of breeding for features other than marking patterns?

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Originally Posted by bearhart

Has anybody heard of breeding for features other than marking patterns?

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DO you mean like reduced patterns or bandings?

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Originally Posted by joepythons

DO you mean like reduced patterns or bandings?

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No, I mean things like girth, length, and even more abstract things like good feeding and disposition.

I do it with my other snake species, like AfRocks. I pick out not only the prettiest marked animals in my opinion, but also shoot for dosility and size. I take the biggest, and calmest animals I have for breeding. In the end, I seem to get calmer, more relaxed, less nervous animals from them.

So you just sell the ones you don't want to re-breed? With the popularity of balls it seems like it would be easy to humanely unload those snakes that are not desirable to your program.

With BPs, there are always going to be entry-level hobbyists that just want a lower-priced normal (male or female) as a pet snake. Or people who are looking for hatchling female normals to grow and breed later. Because of this then yes, I do think that 'humanely unlading' is definately possible. There are those who would rather buy a dirt-cheap import frrom the local pet store, but I would rather have one nice, healthy and captive-born-and-bred baby than five wild-caughts or heck, even captive-hatcheds. Just on principal.

I was thinking a bit more about this topic. If it were an animal suchas a horse or dog, I would be completely against people breeding them for markings.physical characteristics, alone and not giving any regard for temperament. I would not want a beautiful dog that was a vicious thing. :) This is idiotic in my eyes. But for these snakes, temperament does not seem to be genetic.

Yes, I am toying with the idea of breeding solely for temperment. Unlike colors and markings, the genetics here would be extremely difficult to track. However, there is strong evidence that genetics do play a role in temperment. For starters, different species of snakes have different temperments so that proves that there is some genetic basis. Within a particular species, I know that certain breeds of dogs, for example, are characterized by temperment.

My first and 2nd most evil (both hiss and strike regularly as adults) ball pythons are a mother and her only daughter. Not sure I'll stick with that line much longer.