Pros and Cons

So I'm having an internal battle and need some advice.

The snakes in question are:
1.1 Pastel
1.0 Lesser
0.1 Normal

Should I be going for the super pastel or the lesser pastel? I'm not sure which one will give me more options in the future with breeding projects. The normal would come into play to pair with the male that isn't going to the female pastel.

Depends on what projects you want to work on in the future. What are your dream combos that involve the ingredients you have now?

I have a pinstripe that isn't quite ready to breed but when he is I would love to throw him in with the above ingredients to shoot for a kingpin pastel. I really don't know all the future possible morphs that would involve my current snakes. I was hoping someone could enlighten me with some possibilities and steer me in the direction of some great multi-gene morphs to plan for.

IMHO I would go for the super to help in future breeding projects. Keep a super hold-back male or female and you know in the future breeding of that animal that every offspring it produces will be a Pastel at a minimum. Then again if your future breeding calls for a Pastel Lesser than thats the route you should take. Just my two cents.

I usually go with the varying genes. I'd rather have the pastel lesser than the BEL.

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Originally Posted by decensored

I usually go with the varying genes. I'd rather have the pastel lesser than the BEL.

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For that BEL wouldn't I just have to cross one lesser gene offspring back to the 1.0 Lesser? Is that acceptable or inbreeding?

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Originally Posted by cory9oh4

For that BEL wouldn't I just have to cross one lesser gene offspring back to the 1.0 Lesser? Is that acceptable or inbreeding?

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That's totally acceptable. In-breeding isn't an issue with ball pythons like it is for other animals. :)

If I was working with your animals I would go for the pastel lesser. IF you produce a male pastel lesser you could still shoot for super pastels, or super pastel lessers when you raise that male up and pair him back to your pastel female.
You could also pair that lesser up to the female normal, tho that pretty much phases out the need for your single gene pastel male.

If you produced a female pastel lesser you could hold onto her and grow her up for your pinstripe and shoot for pastel kingpins in the future. Or if you still wanted a super pastel you could probably easily trade a pastel lesser for super pastel. Whenever your pinstripe does reach size you could get lemonblasts by doing pinstripe x pastel.
Generally having the superform of any codom gene is a plus cause it eliminates normals, but unless your really wanting to produce super pastels then that single gene pastel male might end up phased out of breeding plans unless you get lucky with a dual sired clutch and get super pastels and pastel lessers from the same clutch.

Thanks for everyone's input so far. You're all certainly helping me!

I would be going for lesser pastels, if you breed your pastel to the pastel you can get super pastels. but the rest will only be pastels and normal. if you breed the lesser to the pastel. you can get lesser pastels, pastels, lessers and yes some normals. but know you have a chance to produce a female lesser and female pastels to hold back with a lesser pastel. the other way you would only have a chance for more pastel females with the chance of a super pastel. you could possible add more, different females to your collection this way is what I'm trying to tell you.

http://ballpythonbreeder.com/2012/02...thon-breeders/ <--- very good read


i would say breed the lesser to both females, and hope for a lesser pastel male to replace your lesser male.

to put it bluntly, i think your collection has too many males while at the same time males that are genetically more powerful than the females are missing.

but then, there is no right or wrong as long as the animals are well cared for and bring you joy, this is merely a question of more effective versus less effective. And that only has meaning if you care about making money with the BPs you produce.

basically, if money is not an issue, just disregard my comment and the article i linked.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pythonfriend

http://ballpythonbreeder.com/2012/02...thon-breeders/ <--- very good read


i would say breed the lesser to both females, and hope for a lesser pastel male to replace your lesser male.

to put it bluntly, i think your collection has too many males while at the same time males that are genetically more powerful than the females are missing.

but then, there is no right or wrong as long as the animals are well cared for and bring you joy, this is merely a question of more effective versus less effective. And that only has meaning if you care about making money with the BPs you produce.

basically, if money is not an issue, just disregard my comment and the article i linked.

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Thanks for that article! I know I have quite a basic lineup. Like you said, I should be trying to replace the single gene male with a double gene and start getting a better male lineup. It's just hard getting there when I'm starting from the ground up with single gene snakes.

Either pairing you do you can't go wrong. It depends on what YOU are looking to do. You can't go wrong with either a Super Pastel or a Pastel Lesser in your future breeding projects. You could get a Pastel Lesser male breed him back to mom get a nice Super Pastel Lesser if the odds are good to you. With a Super Pastel like I stated earlier it will mean that all future breedings of that snake will give you at a minimum all pastels plus a chance for 2 or 3 genes animals depending what your breeding it to. Good luck and just remember you cant go wrong either way.

I think I'm going with the Lesser Pastel then breeding back. Thanks for everyones advice!

if breeding goes well, you can hold back maybe some double-gene stuff, be it super pastel or pastel lesser.

and you can sell all the other hatchlings and maybe one of your current males.

and then you can buy cheaper male hatchlings that do have two genes, pastave or bee or lemonblast or firefly are not expensive anymore. also a male visual albino is inexpensive to get, for your het girl, a visual male to het female pairing doubles your chances to get visuals, and the rest will be 100% hets instead of 66% possible hets.

and then next season you will already produce lots of nice two-gene stuff, maybe some triple gene combos, more stuff that sells well and more nice holdbacks.

thats what my battle plan would be with this starting stock. you can give your next season some real drive with 2-gene males that cost less than 300 dollars each, and you have good chances to make that money if you get lucky and get eggs this season.

no matter if you want to grow your collection, or if you want to keep it below 10 adult BPs permanently, trying to improve genetic quality from season to season really pays off.