Starting to breed Ball Pythons, what morphs should I start with?

I would love to get into ball python breeding sometime in the next year or so. I am wondering what morphs a beginner breeder would be successful in. Im not saying the crazy expensive ones. I would love to start out with pinstripe X Pastel. Or Spider X Pastel. I like the Co-Doms and Doms. I dont quite get the Recessive gene. I get the basic sense but its still a little confusing with all the hets and that. Is there any other low costing ball pythons that wont tear a whole through my wallet? Id like to go into the simple ones first then once I understand it more Ill get the more expensive ones. Thanks!

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Originally Posted by Sand_Boa_Owner

I would love to get into ball python breeding sometime in the next year or so. I am wondering what morphs a beginner breeder would be successful in. Im not saying the crazy expensive ones. I would love to start out with pinstripe X Pastel. Or Spider X Pastel. I like the Co-Doms and Doms. I dont quite get the Recessive gene. I get the basic sense but its still a little confusing with all the hets and that. Is there any other low costing ball pythons that wont tear a whole through my wallet? Id like to go into the simple ones first then once I understand it more Ill get the more expensive ones. Thanks!

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Breed the morphs that interest you.

what are your plans with the clutch? are you looking to keep them as pets or are u breeding to sell? you could breed to produce pets u like or you could breed stuff that’s hot in the market (i.e. bananas).

But to answer your question on low cost breeding projects – you could go with the BEL complexes and other co-dom morphs that could potentially create supers that look way different from their pairings. For example, for around $200 u could get a pair of Mojaves that may produce an all white snake.

At the low-end morphs, just start with the morphs you personally like! It's all about the same "success-wise" (if success means how well they will sell) for just starting in the market with no existing breeder reputation, and with common morphs that don't break the bank. It's all on you.

The BEL morphs seems to hold popularity pretty well and depreciates relatively slower... I personally like how lessers and mojaves look.

Thanks everyone. I am planning to sell them and keep a few for future breeding projects. But not inbreed. I think that getting Mojaves sounds like a good idea and the BEL along with the banana. I think they are beautiful snakes. I would like to get into the axanthic, banana and candy genes too, but I think Ill wait a couple years until the price goes down. And what can I get with 100 at the next reptile expo, assuming I have all the nessecary setups and racks.

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Originally Posted by Sand_Boa_Owner

Thanks everyone. I am planning to sell them and keep a few for future breeding projects. But not inbreed. I think that getting Mojaves sounds like a good idea and the BEL along with the banana. I think they are beautiful snakes. I would like to get into the axanthic, banana and candy genes too, but I think Ill wait a couple years until the price goes down. And what can I get with 100 at the next reptile expo, assuming I have all the nessecary setups and racks.

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You should be able to get mojaves, spiders, pins, pastels and maybe axanthic for a round that $100.00 price range ech. Since candy is recessive I wouldn't expect to see the price drop to much over the next few years.

Personally, I'd save up and get something like a pied or a combo like a bee or blast or super of some kind. But that's just my two cents.

Definitely breed what you love and work from there. Start with Females as they take longer to get up to breeding size/age, you can pick up males later.

Whatever you decide, you should get your female first as she will take longer to grow up. A Pastave or Lesser Pastel would be a nice double gene animal to start with and are reasonably priced. That would let you save up for a year and pick up a nice double gene male that has some combination of the following genes, Lesser, Leopard, Mojave, Fire, or Enchi. I've included Lesser and Mojo again because depending on which you get in the female, you may want the other in a male to shoot for BELs. It all depends on where you want to end up with your project and what you plan to keep.

As far as being relatively low cost buy easy to sell, enchi, pied, leopard, clown would be my picks, they just fit into so many projects that they appeal to most people.

You can also look at some multi gene animals on WOBP, find one that you like, and then see what you need to get there.

Dave

Thanks everyone for your input, I really like the idea of a pair of mojaves and enchi X leopard.

I haven't bred yet but I'm at the same point as you. I'm not going to breed for the money (money will just be used to supplement racks, feeders, etc) but at the same time you don't want to be breeding a bunch of normals or undesireable snakes. For recessives I think visual pairs or male visual to female het are good ideas (granted they just cost more than the common co-doms), but buying double hets I just don't like. Sure you can get a het pied breeding pair at a show for 100 bucks EASY, but then you'll end up with 25% pied (yay!) and then 75% will be normals that are 66% poss het pied. I'm sure you can rehome the normals, but it's harder and they're just not worth much. From what I've seen they sell for a little more than normals but they just don't move fast. So you could be stuck with a bunch of normals that might or might not be het for pied that you still have to feed/house/etc.

I personally have a bigger budget to work with so I'm going to be going for banana pieds (which I could go into more if you wanted), but with a smaller budget I'd go for a multi gene male and single gene or normal females. For me I have access to cheap feeders so multiple snakes (to a certain point) are a no brainer. Ideally you would find a 3 or 4 gene male, but I can find nice double gene males for like 200 or less on kingsnake. Then just get the cheapest (as in good quality, not loading up on petsmart females) females for however many you can support. So with that pairing you can make clutches that are 25% normal, 50% 1 gene, and 25% 2 gene. You won't make good money on those clutches really, but you'll be creating animals with more value so it'll be easier to find homes for the ones you don't want to keep. Plus it'll be exciting with the multiple gene ones to see what you get from each clutch, like bumblebees, lemon blasts, etc.