A purely curious breeding question

[patattack]

I'm new to this whole ball python scene, and I'm trying to figure things out. So far I've gathered that normals are generally old hat and rare/interesting morphs are by far the driving force of the hobby.

I'm curious, though...is there ever any cooperative breeding between breeders? For instance: if a well-established breeder has male cool-morph-A, and a trusted acquaintance (another well-established) has female cool-morph-B, does anyone ever say to their trusted acquaintance "Hey, let's breed these two together...each of us can get half of the eggs and consider it a gamble as to what we'll get!" It seems like that would be a cool way to begin an involvement in a breeding program. Are breeders too competitive to do this? Or are there other reasons that it wouldn't happen?

[Chase13]

I'm not sure if large breeders practice this but I know plenty small breeders do it.

[Fearless]

This is actually a somewhat common occurance, they call it a breeding loan in the snake world! Dont know how many people split the eggs up and take chances like that, think its usually a split of the babies or whatever is agreed upon before they make up the contract.

[patattack]

This is actually a somewhat common occurance, they call it a breeding loan in the snake world! Dont know how many people split the eggs up and take chances like that, think its usually a split of the babies or whatever is agreed upon before they make up the contract.

Hahah, yeah, I guess genetics is predictable enough that you could fairly easily work out who gets which offspring. Maybe I'm just more of a gamblin' man.

[Gloryhound]

The owner of the Female generally takes on a lot more risk. Normally things are more balanced in the direction of the female owner unless the male is a far more expensive snake. The division of the offspring is normally based on the eggs that hatch. Everything needs to be written up in a signed contract first that tells how things will be divided based on 1-16 offspring with any contingencies mentioned. They can be your best friend in the world, but when dollar signs come into a friendship hurt feelings and the idea of getting cheated can easily destroy that. We thought about it and looked into it for the next breeding coming this fall/winter and decided against it. We are now just buying the male out right.