Where do Snowballs stand?

[CritterVet]

I see a lot of double het for albino and VPI axanthics for sale (aka double het for Snow), but I hardly ever see Snow babies themselves for sale, both online and at shows. Also I rarely hear about breeding projects involving Snows. What's going on? Are they falling out of fashion? Seem like powerful breeders IMO, being double homozygous for albino and axanthic. I'd have thought they'd be in higher demand.

[771subliminal]

I see a lot of double het for albino and VPI axanthics for sale (aka double het for Snow), but I hardly ever see Snow babies themselves for sale, both online and at shows. Also I rarely hear about breeding projects involving Snows. What's going on? Are they falling out of fashion? Seem like powerful breeders IMO, being double homozygous for albino and axanthic. I'd have thought they'd be in higher demand.

if they were falling out then you wouldnt see the double hets for sale.
i know heather is working on snows and i think spider snows as well.

[Serpent_Nirvana]

My guess is it's because breeding DH snow x DH snow, you only have a 1 in 16 chance per egg of producing a snow.

I don't think I'd ever bother starting a snow project nowadays because they don't impress me all that much. With all the white snakes popping up nowadays (out of breedings that have a 1 in 4 or greater chance per egg of hitting the white snake, depending on the breeding), I don't feel the need to expend all that breeding effort to get an off-white, faintly-patterned snake with red eyes when I can breed two snakes together and get pretty, pure-white, blue-eyed snakes in one generation.

I'm sure those who really really dig that off-white, barely-patterned red-eyed snake would feel differently ... But then once they get that baby, after possibly several clutches worth of tries, I'll betcha they're keeping it.

[CritterVet]

I guess I thought there were more snows out there, thus all the double hets for sale. If you have two snows, breeding them results in an all snow clutch. That's why I thought it strange that there are lots of double hets but very few snows for sale. Perhaps there are just a lot of "single" snows in collections, not pairs.

I think snowballs have a certain elegance to them that the leucistics lack. I like both types of white snakes personally.

[OhhWatALoser]

i want to know if you add hypo if it will look anything like the moon glow boas

[MarkS]

They fell out of fashion the day the first Leucistic ball python was produced. I'm not sure they were really all that high on anyone's list to begin with, they look too much like a faded albino then what you would expect a snow ball to look like. They're really more of an interesting experiment rather then a 'must have' morph. I plan on creating some one day using red axanthics, but they really don't look good enough to be that high on my project list.

[briz]

I love mine. It's funny people say they have fallen out of fashion but it is still a breeding power house. I look at it like this, I can breed him to anything and have the offspring able to produce albinos and axanthics of that morph down the road. Secondly once you hit the snow the project becomes much easier to work. It took me 12 eggs to hit on mine and I also got a albino and an axanthic out of it that are ph for snow.

[CritterVet]

Yeah, the genetics they come with are why I expected to see more for sale. Time will tell I guess.

[AaronP]

Yeah, the genetics they come with are why I expected to see more for sale. Time will tell I guess.

Ghost and Axanthics have been around for roughly the same amount of time but you see extremely few DH for True Ghost for sale.

Same thing with DH for Albino Piebald, there are a few out there but I think there are more Snows than their are Albino Piebalds.

I don't think people appreciate Recessives morphs now that we have tons of Co-Dom/Dominate morphs.

[Eventide]

I love white snakes, and Snows are no exception. If they're "out of style," then whatever; I'm still going to produce a few different types of Snows.

I think the lack of Snows available is similar to what AaronP said, but in more general terms. Most (if not all) double recessives are still rare to see for sale.