To the major ball python breeders

Produce what you want and don't worry about what future prices will be.
Don't expect to see the same prices 2 years from now as you do today.
Look at what mojaves were 2 years ago.
Breed and keep what you like. Any that you sell is just the icing on the cake.

Something to consider also in the pricing is the cost just to make some of the morphs. Particularly the double and triple morphs. In the future expect to see quadruple morphs. Years of breeding go into it and these guys are playing odds games.

We will use a Snow as an example.
To make a Snow you need an Axanthic and an Albino or at least the traits. If you breed an Axanthic to an Albino (most breeders do not sell breeding morphs like the Axanthic or Albino for cheap so you will probably get snakes less than a year old which means you will have 2 years or more tied up in just raising them to breeding age.) you will produce normal looking snakes that are refered to as double hets. Then you have to breed the double hets back together once they reach a breeding age which will be in 2-3 years or more. Now when you breed these double hets back together you have a 1 in 16 chance of each egg being a Snow. It may take 3 or more breeding cycles to hit those odds or you could get lucky on cycle breeding cycle number 1. To make snows every time you need 2 snows of the same axanthic line. To get them old enough to breed together you will have another 2-3 years or more. So by the time a breeder is able to start breeding his own snows regularly you are looking at a minimum of 6 years.

Other double morphs do not always breed the same double morph when bred together. An example of this is the bumblebee. Breeding 2 bumblebees together produces the following odds of offspring.
Each egg has the following odds:
6 in 16 of being a Bumble Bee (Spider X Pastel)
3 in 16 of being a Killer Bee (Spider X Super Pastel)
3 in 16 of being a Spider Ball
2 in 16 of being a Pastel
1 in 16 of being a Super Pastel (Super pastel is when both sides of the co-dominate are present)
1 in 16 of being a Normal

Pretty good odds for nice Ball Pythons, but still not perfect. At least 4 years are spent to make two Bumblebee's that are of age to breed and you still don't have perfect odds of constantly producing Bumblebees.

Also if the government ever gets off its rear and bans the importation of wild caught ball Pythons you could see a jump in base prices of captive bred ball pythons. This is a soft spot with a lot of breeders and should be reserved for debate elsewhere!

It might just be me but it reminds me of the painted up hermit crabs.. Designer snakes so to speak. Next you can die them the color you want by injecting them with some chemical that affects their natural genes and gives them a color..

I dont know its just not for me I guess...:snake2:

I saw albino spiders at the Tinley Park show for $3,500.