to line breed*quality* or shoot for combos?

I love the reduced patterns to where its mainly the head coloring with a stripe and a couple circles on the sides. I'm definitely going to have to look at parents when i buy a het. . . at the expo up here next month i'm going to be looking for either a mojave or enchi het clown. hopefully i find something

Quality sells first everytime. The reason these top breeders produce such nice animals is because they invested in the very best top shelf animals. This is where I feel almost every person makes biggest mistake, they will buy 2 lesser quality animals instead of spending the money on the very best. So your already behind when you start breeding. That big breeder that bought the very best, he has bred those animals together and held back the very best.

Now when you have these top shelf babies you have produced and its time to sell you have 2 options.
#1 You put a higher price tag on them because of the quality and hope to make a few extra bucks
#2 you price them along with the general market price.

Personally I go with option 2. Quality sells everytime. You have 6 pastels at a show at 6 different tables all priced the same, 9/10 times the nicest will be sold first. Dont fight your competition with price dumping, fight them with quality. If more people did that we wouldnt see the sky is falling threads every year. But that goes back to my 2 lesser animals for the same price as 1 top shelf animal comment above.

I purchased all of my breeder animals for quality first and foremost, sometimes paying over retail to get the best of the best.

Now that I am producing top notch offspring, it is STILL hard to sell them. Selling babies is a TON of work with advertising and getting the word out there. If you do not already have the fan base of a Wilbanks or BHB, it can be very hard.

Also the majority of folks either cannot see the difference or do not care when it comes to higher quality of a given morph. Far and away I find that folks are shopping for the deal, not for the best they can find. That is sad to me, but the truth.

Just keep that in mind and know that the babies will likely not sell themselves, no matter what the quality.

Off to film a video and get the work out about a new clutch... ;)

I would agree that quality sells and that buyers are usually willing to pay slightly above market price for a very good example of a morph... say female pastels go for $75 - $125, you're more likely to get the $125 if it is an excellent pastel.

For myself, I am trying to buy quality examples of morphs that I would be interested in breeding, should I choose to later on. For me contrast, reduced pattern, cleanness of color, and floating "doughnuts" (on anything mojave-based), are things I look for. I am willing to pay a little more if the animal fits those criteria, and I'll just skip lesser-quality morphs and wait for the right one to become available.

I think if you start with quality, and breed for the traits you want (like those I listed above) in any morph you choose to work with, you'll do fine. Selling babies is a whole other ball game though and others might not agree with what you find desirable in certain morphs. I think that line breeding for certain traits definitely has its advantages though. As others have said, if you start with quality stock already, that will put you a few steps ahead in the game.

I personally am picking up only exemplary examples of the females I plan to use. I am starting ground level on some things but am picking up exceptional multi gene animals as well. I have spreadsheets, cost plans and am my own feeder factory. I am lucky enough to have made some friends right as I made my decision to breed. So find an end goal and make your plan based on what you want.