normals

how many breeders actually use normals very often? How many normals do you have as part of your breeding collection vs how many morphs you have?

do you select only animals with say, reduced markings, black backs, gstripe, exc

You can't have to many normals. :D

I have 5 normal females to my 2 morphed and 2 het females.

thanks for your input :D we have two normal females, two morph females, one morph male right now

All my females are normals, but I do have one het hypo girlie coming soon!

You going to always need Normal females...........along the way you'll end up with normals males that you just have to keep! They are just as cool!

and just like Jas said.......breed your normals males to your Co-doms! :sweeet:

hehe right now we only have ONE male to four females lol. We plan to pick up a male mojave next year since we need to get some growth on the female mojave but we were thinking about picking up one more normal female if we find the right one.

I definately believe that normal females will always be needed in the breeding arena, even for morph breeders. People are not always going to want combos.. people will want, say, spiders and pastels. Which usually come from morph x normal breedings..
Normal males are great pet snakes IMO. I have a striped normal that, should he not prove out, I plan on keeping just because I am attached to him as a snake. Even if he does not produce anything genetic :)

great info jen. you made great points!

Most of my females are normal (8 of them), I also have hets and morphs.

I am definitely planning on adding more girls this year (normal & morph)

WOW, thats fantastic to hear! Its great because I know I can start adding more male morphs next year and generally males are less expensive. we were going for the morphs we like best (killer bees, bees, BEL) we *might* pick up one or two more normals this year, however we are going to be more selective and only get what we love since female normals are more or less easy to come by.

Right now I house 12 normal females that I will be breeding. I will go both ways, for example, I have a pair of Mojaves. I will breed the Mojave male to the Mojave girl and a couple of normals. The same thing with my Cinny pair, Pastels, and Spiders.

If nothing else, normals will be a way of finding out what's in new morphs and outcrossing current breeders for some new genes. I'm pretty sure that's the easiest way to figure out what a new morph is, breed it to a normal, if the normal produces all normals in a clutch of 10, it's probably either not genetic or its recessive. Breeding the babies together will confirm this. Without normals, figuring out the genetic side of new morphs would be alot more difficult, at least to me... I'd say look for no'06 normals. Alot of people have them and they're alot cheaper than say a 1500 gram female, even though it's a little late to start breeding snakes now, esp if you started cooling in Nov., so to me get the snake for less money and you have a year to get her to 1500 gr. That said, het females are better made and raised, people often charge too much for het adults to make them feasible...I always look for baby het pied girls to raise, bc people will always love pied balls, and the hets become very expensive as adults (prob because so many people have het males). In the end, normalswill always be important.

On a side note, look at beardies, the normals are now RARE! People look for them and can't find them, pay more for normals than bad colored babies. Like an antique. Not that this will happen with bps, but it just shows that when people have finished with the morphs and theyre all out there in pet stores (prob in 2100), the normals will come back! Mark my words, theyre still the coolest looking ones, the normal JUNGLE pattern rocks!

I have around 30 Normal females in my breeding scheme. The rest are hets (may prove to be normals), and morphs.

I'm not really a breeder....yet, but I will say I will definatly be adding some normals to my collection soon. I find normals to be beautiful anyway. :D

I used to believe that you could never have too many normals - but clearly the normal has lost it's place in most breeding programs. Thats why normal breeder females have gone from $1K to $200 in the past two years. They've been replaced with co-doms.

Last year I sold off about half of my normal breeder females only holding back a few favorites and aberrants. I loaned out about 10 of them to friends because I had really no use for them - this season they are sitting there unused in their tubs. For the simple fact that I don't want to use them to just make more co-doms - I'll produce plenty of co-doms with my mixes I don't see a necessity in producing a bunch of $100 animals - just because I can. If people would stop flooding the market it would be a much better place to be.

thanks for your input tosha, certainly a different spin on things

I have 0.6 normals and 4.5 morphs. I'm not planning on buying any more normals ever (unless I come across some killer female juvies like Rabernet's girls). Only morphs from here on out.

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Originally Posted by Ginevive

People are not always going to want combos.. people will want, say, spiders and pastels. Which usually come from morph x normal breedings..

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What morph breeder would prefer to have a pastel or spider hatch out over a bumble bee? You're still bound to hatch some base morphs in the process. If you have the normals breed them, but if you have the choice of breeding a female pastel to a normal to get pastels, or breed her to a spider to get bees, pastes and spiders, I would do the latter every time.