Why are females so much more desirable than males?

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Originally Posted by Tosha_Mc

Depends on the morph, the age of the animal and where you are on the breeding pyramid. In some cases a male is more desirable in others it's a female. What would you rather have a male calico that will breed for you this year or a female that you have to sit on for 2-3 years before you can use her?

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Desire has nothing to do with cost. I would rather have a 1.1 pair of "Super" Lessers for $100.00 but no one is going to offer that to me. Price is a reflection of two things, what the purchaser is willing to pay (the demand) and what the seller is willing to sell for (the supply).

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Originally Posted by Ecnal

low end morph---females more expensive
high end morph---males more expensive

this strategy is used to keep prices high

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why does a killer bee male cost more than a female?

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Do you have any evidence to back up this assertion? I did a quick look on Fauna and Kingsnake and a few major breeder sites and only found one female killer bee for sale (via NERD).

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Originally Posted by Ecnal

low end morph---females more expensive
high end morph---males more expensive

this strategy is used to keep prices high

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TRUE -- END OF STORY.:gj:

Ok heres my take on all of this. New morphs usually involve the males priced much higher relative to the females than morphs that have been around for a while. The reason for this is because when a new morph is proven and for sale, the breeder(s) who have that morph are trying to prevent others from producing huge quantities of the new morph so that the market doesnt flood with them quickly. Letting females go gives them more time to keep producing more of their own before anyone else can because it will take longer for those females to grow to breeding size while the original producer can have a couple more productive seasons. If males are let go, they can produce many of the new morph and allow other breeders to compete with the original breeder on prices etc earlier. I hope this makes sense to someone. Its just what I can logically piece together I guess

Dominant and recessive has alot to do with it too.

You need both parents genetic to make recessives so females are more in demand in many cases(even if they are just hets, male hets are worth much less) then a codom. Supply and demand and breeding necessity are big factors.

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Originally Posted by jhall1468

Your example proves why females are worth more. Like you said, a single lucy male will provide a whole bunch of co-doms. So you need fewer males in your collection than females. This is where supply and demand take up. Using your example further, let's pretend that you end up with 12 Lesser Platinums from your example above. 6 are male, 6 are female. Now, you already have 1 lucy, so why keep 6 male Lessers? Odds are, you will hold back most (if not all) of the females to breed back to dad, and you will sell most (if not all) of the males. So the supply of males in our little micro-economy is +6 and the supply of females is 0.

Demand for females is much higher than males because of the situation above. You only need 1 lesser male to breed to many lesser females. So demand for your lesser males are lower.

The end result is simple. The market supply for lesser males is high, but the market demand for lesser males is low. The market supply for lesser females is low, but the market demand for lesser females is very high. Prices always reflect the markets needs, so males are going to be cheaper than females.

Now this doesn't always ring true... market demands for rare morphs are high regardless of gender, so you'll often see males and females going for the same prices, but I simply borrowed from your example :).

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Again, I'm new to reptiles, but in the mammal world this isn't the best thing in the world. How much of a chance of birth defects do you get here and how much is too much as far as breeding to dads/moms or brothers/sisters?

And I think I understand everything now, thanks very much.

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Originally Posted by ScottyDsntKnow

Again, I'm new to reptiles, but in the mammal world this isn't the best thing in the world. How much of a chance of birth defects do you get here and how much is too much as far as breeding to dads/moms or brothers/sisters?

And I think I understand everything now, thanks very much.

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We do it all the time in mammal's with line breeding. That being said, inbreeding is relatively common among reptiles, especially ball pythons. Most wild-caught morphs must be inbred to determine the genetics of the animal. However, multiple generations of inbreeding certainly aren't a good thing. There are a lot of "opinions" on this issue, so it's best to start a new thread on it. To answer your question from my POV, it's not a major problem as long as outbreeding is used as often as possible.

Keep in mind, animals that have a massive population today came from a very small gene pool (cheetah et al).

Ok so basically for example if I wind up getting a lesser and a mojave, wind up with a BEL offspring I'd want to breed it back to one of the parents for more BELs with a 50% chance instead of 25% and go from there? But I wouldn't want to breed THOSE offspring together since that'd be a little too much right?

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Originally Posted by jhall1468

Desire has nothing to do with cost. I would rather have a 1.1 pair of "Super" Lessers for $100.00 but no one is going to offer that to me. Price is a reflection of two things, what the purchaser is willing to pay (the demand) and what the seller is willing to sell for (the supply).

Do you have any evidence to back up this assertion? I did a quick look on Fauna and Kingsnake and a few major breeder sites and only found one female killer bee for sale (via NERD).

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The OP asked about why females are more desired -- silly me I actually answered the question, no where did I see him mention cost - perhaps my eyes are deceiving me. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

BTW -- it took me all of about 3 minutes to find a half dozen killer bees for sale and I didn't even bother looking on NERDS site. :gj:

Because you can't make combos with just males ;).

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Originally Posted by AaronP

Because you can't make combos with just males ;).

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True Dat!