The bug has officially bit...

[Evilme5229]

A thing to remember when your breeding recessive genes that my distributor tipped me out on. Any recessive morph that you breed to a normal, should be strictly with that normal. The reason being, that the normal (if a female) can retain the sperm for the next year.

So for example. I am breeding my male ghost (recessive) to my normal female. I shouldnt breed her to any other male that I have because she can retain the sperm from the ghost if I try to breed her with my pewter the following year. Any normals that appear out of clutch when I breed her to my pewter might not be normals, but actually can be het for ghost. Its interesting.

As far as not having anymore normal females, I tend to disagree with that. Especially if you have a pewter. Normals are inexpensive and will deliver for you if you have a wonderful additional like the pewter. I just think its wonderful that you can have three normals to breed a pewter to, have 3 clutches of eggs with tons of options available to you. Remember! You can always breed whatever babies (ex. pastel) back to your pewter and start the morphing process again. Its an inexpensive way to get the snakes you want, without the initial cost.

Not to knock your option on pieds, but I hear that they are quite tempermental on feeding. Right now my distributor that has had his for years trying to breed (believe me hes a pro at this) tells me that this is his last year trying to breed pieds or hes getting rid of his entire collection of them. He says that they are usually slow eaters and hard breeders. If you do intend to go with that breed, I would say that to wait till you get a little more experienced. My husband loves pieds, but after hearing an expert tell us that they are tempermental at eating and breeding, I think we are going to stay clear.

Albinos, I think that if you got a het female and a visual showing male would be an awesome project. Yet I'm a more lavendar albino girl. However, I'm probably the dum dum that would pay for both a visual male and visual female. hahaha.

Super pastels are beautiful animals. My friend just got his first snake and it just so happens to be a pastel. So, I have every intention in "borrowing" him (hahaha) to breed him to my female pastel when he is ready. I think it will be nice to be able to use him and my pewter to make sure I get some nice options.

The morph options are growing and the options on getting nice animals are always attainable. Its all about the initial cost. I would definately start looking at building a rack, your going to need it. I just built mine for $130 with the heating and the supplies.

[marct]

This is the first I hear about pieds, as a morph, not eating well. I haven't had any problems nor has any of my friends.

[Evilme5229]

This is the first I hear about pieds, as a morph, not eating well. I haven't had any problems nor has any of my friends.

I was shocked myself to hear as well since my husband and I were considering taking it on as a project. My reptile vet was also saying that he has been trying to breed his pieds and was having difficulty. So its not just the distributor I get all my snakes from. If there was one guy that I would trust when it comes to breeding snakes it would be him. I'm just going on what he told me.

I doubt that he would try to steer me in a wrong direction, so I'm just going to trust him. I think it has to come down to also the individual snake, but if hes telling me information to consider I'm going to follow what he says. Regardless, for a first timer breeding, pieds probably wouldn't be the best idea.

[marct]

sounds like you got the right idea, advise i will give you, first the thing you have to tell everyone, don't expect to make money, statistics is against you just so you know. there was a poll about this and something like 80% of us (including me) still havn't broke even since we started this hobby lol. but I still do it because I love it.

2 pointers I can give you, buy your females first, if you buying for first group of babies get all females, theres no need to have a male doing nothing for a year and a half when It could of been a female growing up. get your males after your females had a year or so to grow up.

also just something to think about with recessives, If your recessive morph is female and your co-dom is male, you can produce "co-dom+het" male and breed it back to mom in less than a year.

if the recessive morph is male and your co-dom is female, you would have to produce a "co-dom+het" female and wait 2-3 years for her to grow up to breed her.

recessive females will speed up your end result, if your result is a co-dom+recessive

X2

[bman123]

Normal females are a good thing. You can get big 900+ Gram females for $100 or so. They are cheap and a quick easy way to get morph hatchlings.

Get a male bumble bee and breed him to 2 or 3 normal females. You will get pastel, spider, and bumble bee babies. You can also get a female cinny and lesser and breed the bee to the cinny and lesser. Getting bumble bee, pastel, spider, and cinna bee or pastel, pastel lessers, lesser bees and spiders.

A male bee, female cinny and lesser gives you alot of offspring morphs. Just food for thought

[Evilme5229]

Normal females are a good thing. You can get big 900+ Gram females for $100 or so. They are cheap and a quick easy way to get morph hatchlings.

Get a male bumble bee and breed him to 2 or 3 normal females. You will get pastel, spider, and bumble bee babies. You can also get a female cinny and lesser and breed the bee to the cinny and lesser. Getting bumble bee, pastel, spider, and cinna bee or pastel, pastel lessers, lesser bees and spiders.

A male bee, female cinny and lesser gives you alot of offspring morphs. Just food for thought

I think if he got a pewter and a bumble bee with some norms and he will be set for quite sometime playing around with morphs. The males should be pretty inexpensive and if you get some normal females ( you can even get them at breeding age to get the project rolling). And your breeding this coming fall or the next if your lucky.

[OhhWatALoser]

Not to knock your option on pieds, but I hear that they are quite tempermental on feeding. Right now my distributor that has had his for years trying to breed (believe me hes a pro at this) tells me that this is his last year trying to breed pieds or hes getting rid of his entire collection of them. He says that they are usually slow eaters and hard breeders. If you do intend to go with that breed, I would say that to wait till you get a little more experienced. My husband loves pieds, but after hearing an expert tell us that they are tempermental at eating and breeding, I think we are going to stay clear.

not to knock on your distributor, but don't start spreading non-sense like this. there would be no reason it would be a bad eater just because its a pied or any morph for that matter. Did you know there are some normals that don't eat well? I don't own a pied but im sure other with pieds on here will tell you they eat just fine. there are ball pythons that are bad eaters, it has to do with the fact that they are ball pythons not what morph they are. he also claims they are bad breeders? well i think all the pied combos and all the ones for sale disproves that in about half a second.

im sorry he had bad luck with his but him making blanket statments like that would make it really hard to call him an expert. its part of dealing with living animals sometimes thing just don't work out and any expert should know that.

[Bruceweb]

I think its rubbish..I have an 08 female that feeds on mice & 1700g, she is an excellent feeder..pied male eats weekly on rats..both are breeding constantly at the moment..hear these stories all the time, mainly rubbish, just depends on the individual imo

[kc261]

A thing to remember when your breeding recessive genes that my distributor tipped me out on. Any recessive morph that you breed to a normal, should be strictly with that normal. The reason being, that the normal (if a female) can retain the sperm for the next year.

So for example. I am breeding my male ghost (recessive) to my normal female. I shouldnt breed her to any other male that I have because she can retain the sperm from the ghost if I try to breed her with my pewter the following year. Any normals that appear out of clutch when I breed her to my pewter might not be normals, but actually can be het for ghost. Its interesting.

Actually, it wouldn't be a big problem to do this. Sure, you might produce what you thought was a normal, but was actually het hypo, but who cares?

The bigger problem is if you do it in reverse order. If you breed the pewter to a normal the first year, and the next year breed that same normal female to a hypo. If she retained sperm from the pewter, you could produce normal offspring that were sired by the pewter and truly are normal and not het for anything, yet you think they were sired by the hypo and that they are 100% hets.

[marct]

[QUOTE=OhhWatALoser;1273121]not to knock on your distributor, but don't start spreading non-sense like this. QUOTE]

x100

lol