How much does a piebald cost?

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Originally Posted by Blandini

But I'm planning to sell the babies, not breeding them. How much do you think each pied baby could cost on the next year spring?

Another quick question: If I reproduce a het vs het, the normal babies also carry the recessive het gene right?

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No one can tell you how much a pied will sell for next spring. As I said it changes drastically. This time last year pieds were selling for $800-1000 and now they are selling for $500-600. It could go up this year or it could drop more. That is why no one can tell you how much they will sell for. There is a LOT you need to consider before breeding your snakes and not just how much the babies will sell for, such as what will you do with the babies before they sell. Can you afford to feed them all until they sell? Can you house them all? Have you considered that people are leery of buying hets from unknowns and there is a good chance you are going to have some trouble selling those?

100% het pied male bred to a 100% het pied female has a 25% chance per egg of producing a visual. You may not get any pieds, you may get a lot of pieds. It's all chance and we can only tell you statistically what the outcome should be in a perfect world. All the normal looking babies are called 66% het pieds because statistically every 2 out of 3 of them will be het pieds.

100% het pied male bred to a normal female will produce 50% het pieds because there is a 50% chance each baby carries half of the genetic code to produce a pied. That means in the perfect world half of the babies are normals and half are het pieds. You CANNOT tell the difference between a het and a normal.

ahhhh! ok he lost me when he said he was going to sell the babies not breed them cuz from his avatar his snakes look like they are just babies themselves.

in that case blandini do you know how old your snakes are and how much they weigh? you may not be able to breed them as soon as you would like if they are not big enough or old enough. by the time your snakes ARE big enough and old enough the market may have changed so its really difficult to predict how much the pied's and het pied's will be going for at that time. Also please make sure you fully research everything (and this site is a GREAT place to start) about breeding before you even decide it's something you want to do

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Originally Posted by Kinra

No one can tell you how much a pied will sell for next spring. As I said it changes drastically. This time last year pieds were selling for $800-1000 and now they are selling for $500-600. It could go up this year or it could drop more. That is why no one can tell you how much they will sell for. There is a LOT you need to consider before breeding your snakes and not just how much the babies will sell for, such as what will you do with the babies before they sell. Can you afford to feed them all until they sell? Can you house them all? Have you considered that people are leery of buying hets from unknowns and there is a good chance you are going to have some trouble selling those?

100% het pied male bred to a 100% het pied female has a 25% chance per egg of producing a visual. You may not get any pieds, you may get a lot of pieds. It's all chance and we can only tell you statistically what the outcome should be in a perfect world. All the normal looking babies are called 66% het pieds because statistically every 2 out of 3 of them will be het pieds.

100% het pied male bred to a normal female will produce 50% het pieds because there is a 50% chance each baby carries half of the genetic code to produce a pied. That means in the perfect world half of the babies are normals and half are het pieds. You CANNOT tell the difference between a het and a normal.

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What she is saying is any babies that come out looking like normals can only be sold as normals that are possible het pied. There really is no price difference there. Possible hets have almost no value. Almost all of us (breeders) sell our 66% and 50% possible hets as normals with a normal price tag. $20-$30 at shows and sometimes reptile shops that we trust or other sources. Almost no one will pay more than that because they have to be bred to a visual or a 100% het, and they must produce visuals before anyone will know if they actually carry that gene.

You won't make any money on possible hets. Please don't get into ball pythons thinking you're going to get a return. If you know this little about them, I guarantee you will not make a dime compared to what you spend on proper housing, food, incubation, starting and fattening up babies, etc... Most small time hobby breeders don't make money. If they have 20 breeder females they are happy to make back what they spend on taking care of and feeding the balls through the year. Plus the housing, care, and feeding of the rats that they breed.

A pair of Het Pied will cost you $250 to $300 by the time you produce a pied if you produce a pied they could very well sell for $100.

Obviously if you want to produce a pied you do not want to waste your time buying possible hets and trying to prove them out, could take YEARS may not even happen.

My advice to you before thinking about breeding and especially how much money you are gonna make, get some experience under your belt as a owner and in the mean time do some research on breeding, genetics, what breeding involves, the cost of breeding etc and than decide is it is still something you want to do.

I've sold pieds this year for $500-800 depending on the sex and amount of white. Best bet would be to get a low white male and better the odds.