cheap but cool morph?

Any ideas on a cheap but good looking morph. I know pastels range from 200-300 but they just like barely have a hint of yellow(to me at least).

How cheap? Plus where are you looking? I've seen some killer pastels for $100 or less..

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Originally Posted by bjfoste1

Any ideas on a cheap but good looking morph. I know pastels range from 200-300 but they just like barely have a hint of yellow(to me at least).

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I've never seen a "cheap" morph, but there are a few inexpensive ones. If $200-$300 is your price range and Pastels aren't "good enough" then you should probably be questioning whether or not ball pythons are the field for you.

If money is your primary interest here, I'd keep looking. There's a lot of people seeing Porches in their dreams when they initially look at the ball python market, but usually, they are sorely disappointed.

I got my Pastel for $125 at a reptile show. You can see pics of him on this thread here

I think its a nice looking pastel. You've got to see them in person to really judge, as I have seen some pretty ugly ones too. I would make an effort to visit a reptile show when one comes to town, as you are likely going to get better deals, and you can get your hands on a few different morphs to see what you like.

You need to really look to find a good deal. It won't just fall into your lap. I looked around constantly for about 3 weeks for a female normal and ended up getting 1.3 normals, 1.0 het albino and 0.1 wild caught/captive raised for $900. Two of those females are breeding weight too!


Look and ye shall find! :sunny:

How about find a nice morph that catches your eye and start up a payment plan. There are several breeders out there that are more than willing to put the snake of your dreams into your hands.;)


Hope this helps.

Like said find something you like. If your going to breed then think about what it can be crossed with it. Start saving also if you can try to buy from someone you can go and see the snake. Ive seen some really bad pastels, but not alot. I think it had alot to do with the pics. The guy i got my male pastel from this year. Most of his pictures of pastels that he had on his site. Made me not want to get one from him. I went to his place to check things out and see if i could find a nice pastel. He showed me about 20 of them. Everyone of them were great, looked nothing like the pics. Ive taken pics of him and when i hold the picture next to him. It looks like two different snakes. Ok maybe a pastel isnt for you. There is so much out there its hard to pick just one. Dont go by the pics most of the time they dont show the real color of the snake. (not just pastels either)

Ya...you can find pastels cheaper than 200-300...Why not then get 1.1 pastels and make yourself some supers...they have more than a 'hint' of yellow. :P
-Josh

You can get a spider for under $400 now. If you wait until this season eggs hatch I don't think you will have any problem finding them for $250 or so. Same goes for Mojaves and maybe even pins. I don't know what you are wanting to spend but you can get an albino for $500-$600 if are not afraid to make people an offer.

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Originally Posted by pfan151

You can get a spider for under $400 now. If you wait until this season eggs hatch I don't think you will have any problem finding them for $250 or so. Same goes for Mojaves and maybe even pins. I don't know what you are wanting to spend but you can get an albino for $500-$600 if are not afraid to make people an offer.

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I wish this wasn't the case. I'm sticking with receissive traits from now on. Sorry to hijack. :)

bjfoste1, you can get a nice pastel, or maybe start a payment plan for a spider, pin stripe, YB, mojave, albino, lesser platinum, cinny, or hets for a carmel albino or basically whatever. I'd suggest finding the coolest snake you've ever seen and starting a payment plan. If they are too much money, there are tons of amazing corn snake morphs out there, and they are way less expensive as BP morphs.

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Originally Posted by PythonWallace

I wish this wasn't the case. I'm sticking with receissive traits from now on. Sorry to hijack. :)

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I have mostly recessives too. But that is only because I really just like the looks of most recessives better than the codoms and does not have anything to do with prices.The only Codoms I own are a pair of lesser's, a female pinstripe and a male Black Pastel.

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Originally Posted by pfan151

I have mostly recessives too. But that is only because I really just like the looks of most recessives better than the codoms and does not have anything to do with prices.The only Codoms I own are a pair of lesser's, a female pinstripe and a male Black Pastel.

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The only things I have are the entire list of morphs from page 1 that are really inexpensive now. Albino, mojave, spider and pastels. Prices seem to be falling faster than expected a few years ago.

I'm beginning to think there's really nothing like a nice blushing pastel. You can get a very nice animal for only $300 or so... if you buy from a good breeder, you'll get an animal that won't brown out with age, but will stay a nice vibrant yellow (that male that Marc from RegiusCo posted up was amazing!!!).

Even in the snake world, you get what you pay for...

How does the reputation of the person you buy from affect the color retention of a snake? last time i checked, it was genetic...

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Originally Posted by Bobsean

How does the reputation of the person you buy from affect the color retention of a snake? last time i checked, it was genetic...

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It's genetic and kind of random, but as far as the genetics go, top breeders only start with the best genetics for the most part, so it's about the best shot you have to get a top quality pastel, or any morph for that matter.

Personally, I wouldn't buy anything from anyone with a bad reputation, but that's just me....


Perhaps I should clarify: I think the guarantee of getting a top notch animal is greater if you get it from someone who is, well... top notch.

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Originally Posted by Bobsean

How does the reputation of the person you buy from affect the color retention of a snake? last time i checked, it was genetic...

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Why don't you ask someone that bought a het from TSE ;).

Reputation matters, especially with several morphs out there appearing very similar. There are people who sell Lessers as Butters, or Pastels of various lineages as Lemons, or normals as hets/possible hets.

I personally won't buy a $100 Pastel, regardless of how pretty it is. When the market is still more than willing to pay $200-$300+, why in the world would you sell at a normals price? It's crazy what I see go on at some of the classifieds outside of BP.net... dropping prices, sometimes 70% over 3 days just to move an animal? It's crazyness to me.

K I'll get off my :soapbx:.

This is off topic, but didn't TSE have a good reputation when they sold all those fake hets?

There's also people apparently selling het spiders. :eek:

Het Spiders? :confuse: Where can I get one? :D


TSE actually still has a good reputation on Fauna, if you just glance at their Sales status and karma. Still in the green, lol. That's why you really need to dig on people... read those 1000 page threads!

Bottom line... you're always taking a risk in this biz. When you deal with animals, that's the way it is. There's always a risk associated... some freak illness and you're out your investment. But the chances of something happening are severely decreased when you do your homework and go with someone who has a good rep and is highly recommended within the community.

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Originally Posted by ladywhipple02

Het Spiders? :confuse: Where can I get one? :D


TSE actually still has a good reputation on Fauna, if you just glance at their Sales status and karma. Still in the green, lol. That's why you really need to dig on people... read those 1000 page threads!

Bottom line... you're always taking a risk in this biz. When you deal with animals, that's the way it is. There's always a risk associated... some freak illness and you're out your investment. But the chances of something happening are severely decreased when you do your homework and go with someone who has a good rep and is highly recommended within the community.

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I hate that about fauna. Every BOI post worth reading (part of) has 200+ pages of petty immature bickering. Like that last thread about Ed, it drives me crazy. I think fauna is where I heard about the petshop selling het spiders, until someone called the BBB when the owner wouldn't take down the sign or even admit that spiders aren't a recessive morph. I've also learned my lesson buying from unknown people to get a deal. Not one "good deal" ever did anything but cost me more money, vet trips and snake losses. Only reputable breeders from now on.

Here is a het for the spider mutation:

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...erMaleof13.jpg

If spider is ever proven dominant we are going to need to start calling them hets and homozygous spiders to distinguish the two.

Is the existence of Het. Spiders debated because they are co-dominate and nearly always produce phenotypical animals as if they were homozygus? I'm still learning.

What I'm thinking of doing once I get into morphs is buying a pastel and a spider and breeding them to make bumblebees/killerbees. I've fell in love with this morph. Maybe this is something you should think about bjfoste1. both pastel's and spiders seem to be pretty inexpensive morphs and bumblebees/killer bees look awesome!

Austin Smith

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Originally Posted by Austin Smith

Is the existence of Het. Spiders debated because they are co-dominate and nearly always produce phenotypical animals as if they were homozygus?

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It's debated because most ball python people first learned about genetics from recessive morphs so believe het means normal looking gene carrier or something like that. Really heterozygous means having an unmatched pair of versions/alleles of whatever gene you are talking about. If the mutation is either co-dominant or completely dominant then the hets don't look normal.

Spiders nearly always produce about half and half phenotypic spiders when bred to normals which is expected for hets. They have an unmatched pair of spider genes and about half the time they pass on the mutant version and about half the time the normal version.

FYI het also doesn't mean half way to something else. A pastel is heterozygous for the pastel mutation; it technically isn't heterozygous for super pastel. If say pinstripe turned out to be completely dominant you would still have heterozygous pinstripes even though they looked just like the homozygous pinstripes (i.e. the definition of dominant) and it wouldn’t affect the het status that there was no visibly different super pinstripe. I don't know if pinstripe is dominant or co-dominant, it's just an example of a candidate that might still turn out to be the first proven dominant ball python morph.

I wish someone would do more digging into the Super Spider myth... it has to be possible. Genetics says it has to be possible: breed two hets together and you get hets and homos. So, unless the homo form of a spider is genetically defective, it has to happen someday.


But, I digress... that's off topic and another thread!

Point of THIS thread: chances are, if you buy from the best, you'll get the best! :D

You can check craigslist for gems. I saw a spider female for $300 once. You probably won't get a baby though.

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Originally Posted by ladywhipple02

I wish someone would do more digging into the Super Spider myth... it has to be possible. Genetics says it has to be possible

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Yes, but for proper verification, we need a bp genome map, and specific test for the spider alleles. Without that, the best we can do is to infer the homozygous version existence through extensive breeding.

your best bet to get a cheaper than normal morph would be to find the next reptile show in your area and check it out. go the first day and check everything out. then wait till the last day the show is in town and see whats left. most breeders dont want to go home with any animals so they will go low. dont take the first offer. mojave is a sweet morph that are getting more common so you could prob find one a little cheaper than normal.

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Originally Posted by ladywhipple02

I wish someone would do more digging into the Super Spider myth... it has to be possible. Genetics says it has to be possible: breed two hets together and you get hets and homos. So, unless the homo form of a spider is genetically defective, it has to happen someday.

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Well, there is a significant possibility that the spider allele is, to a degree, defective. Adam once posted that ALL spiders have some degree of spinning, which most would assume it's the spider allele that's causing it. It would seem (to me) the homozygous spider is fatal. We can, however, only make assumptions since we don't really know what spinning is. It could be degraded motor skills, or even more serious, perhaps causing a deformity in the part of the brain that controls motor skills.

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Originally Posted by ctrlfreq

Yes, but for proper verification, we need a bp genome map, and specific test for the spider alleles. Without that, the best we can do is to infer the homozygous version existence through extensive breeding.

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IMHO, with the length of time the spider has been around, and absolutely no cases of a proven homozygous form of the spider, I think we can safely assume, for whatever reason, a homozygous spider simply isn't possible. To a degree I hope I'm wrong, but given the obvious issues (spinning) with spiders I have mixed feelings about producing them.

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Originally Posted by jhall1468

Well, there is a significant possibility that the spider allele is, to a degree, defective. Adam once posted that ALL spiders have some degree of spinning, which most would assume it's the spider allele that's causing it. It would seem (to me) the homozygous spider is fatal. We can, however, only make assumptions since we don't really know what spinning is. It could be degraded motor skills, or even more serious, perhaps causing a deformity in the part of the brain that controls motor skills.

IMHO, with the length of time the spider has been around, and absolutely no cases of a proven homozygous form of the spider, I think we can safely assume, for whatever reason, a homozygous spider simply isn't possible. To a degree I hope I'm wrong, but given the obvious issues (spinning) with spiders I have mixed feelings about producing them.

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I think that with the length of time the spider has been around, we would see a lot of cases of high in-egg fatality rate if this was the case.

There's a whole other post on the possibility of Super Spiders: http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...t=super+spider

the most inexpensive, and cool morph, is a simple wild-type pattern. There really are no "normals", as there is nothing "normal" about any of them. They are all very unique in their own ways.

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Originally Posted by PythonWallace

I think that with the length of time the spider has been around, we would see a lot of cases of high in-egg fatality rate if this was the case.

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Without developing a base line, it's hard to determine if Spider x Spider has a higher, lower or average in-egg fatality rate. That means we have to get the a LOT of data from, say Pastel x Pastel and Lesser x Lesser breedings, and a LOT of data from Spider x Spider breedings to find out if there is a significantly higher in-egg fatality rate.

And even if there is no disparity, there's still the possibility at some point early on in the fertalization process the egg stops developing, and is simply disposed of prior to any growth. I simply don't know enough about bp phyisology to be certain of anything... but the fact that we have NO proven homozygous Spiders must mean something.

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Originally Posted by ladywhipple02

There's a whole other post on the possibility of Super Spiders: http://ball-pythons.net/forums/show...ht=super+spider

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Pffft.... that thread was so last week. :P

Just tryin' to keep this thread on topic Justin... the poor guy was asking about an affordable morph, and here we are, talking about spider genetics! Lol!

Compare even a dull Pastel to a Normal, and you'll see.. pics do not often do them justice.

... i agree with what other people have been saying about cool patterns too. you can find some awesome pattered snakes for under 100

at narbc today i saw a ton of mojaves for $400 and pastels were $125 give or take. i even saw one for $80 and he had some nice color...granted i was looking at males because i want something to breed to my girl...