Not to hijack this thread or anything but I have a similar question and am also a noob at genetics. I have a 1 year old normal female and would like to buy a baby male at the october reptile show. I am trying to figure out what type of male I should buy to get something other than normal babies. Nothing crazy expensive just something a bit different.

I went to the ballpython link and it seems that whenever you breed something with a normal you should percentage wise never get more then 50% normal from a breeding and the other 50% being different then normal. Is this correct?

What is the next step up from a normal in terms of price? Like I said I don't want to spend a ton of money but would like different color babies. They are all beautiful but I have to start somewhere.