A purely curious breeding question

I'm new to this whole ball python scene, and I'm trying to figure things out. So far I've gathered that normals are generally old hat and rare/interesting morphs are by far the driving force of the hobby.

I'm curious, though...is there ever any cooperative breeding between breeders? For instance: if a well-established breeder has male cool-morph-A, and a trusted acquaintance (another well-established) has female cool-morph-B, does anyone ever say to their trusted acquaintance "Hey, let's breed these two together...each of us can get half of the eggs and consider it a gamble as to what we'll get!" It seems like that would be a cool way to begin an involvement in a breeding program. Are breeders too competitive to do this? Or are there other reasons that it wouldn't happen?

I'm not sure if large breeders practice this but I know plenty small breeders do it.

This is actually a somewhat common occurance, they call it a breeding loan in the snake world! Dont know how many people split the eggs up and take chances like that, think its usually a split of the babies or whatever is agreed upon before they make up the contract.

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Originally Posted by Fearless

This is actually a somewhat common occurance, they call it a breeding loan in the snake world! Dont know how many people split the eggs up and take chances like that, think its usually a split of the babies or whatever is agreed upon before they make up the contract.

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Hahah, yeah, I guess genetics is predictable enough that you could fairly easily work out who gets which offspring. Maybe I'm just more of a gamblin' man.:D

The owner of the Female generally takes on a lot more risk. Normally things are more balanced in the direction of the female owner unless the male is a far more expensive snake. The division of the offspring is normally based on the eggs that hatch. Everything needs to be written up in a signed contract first that tells how things will be divided based on 1-16 offspring with any contingencies mentioned. They can be your best friend in the world, but when dollar signs come into a friendship hurt feelings and the idea of getting cheated can easily destroy that. We thought about it and looked into it for the next breeding coming this fall/winter and decided against it. We are now just buying the male out right.