Nearing the end of guaranteed genetics. What will it mean to you?

[Mike Cavanaugh]

There are already a few out there... and a lot more will be made this season. I am talking about multi morph combos.

Take a male with 4 morphs and pair him to a female with 2 morphs. End result? Each kid will be 1 of up to 32 possible morph combinations. Easy enough right?

Take a stud male with 5 morphs and pair him to a female with 2 morphs. End result? Each kid will be 1 of up to 64 possible morph combinations. Water is starting to get a little muddy.

Take a stud male with 5 morphs and pair him to a female with 3 morphs. End result? Each kid will be 1 of up to 128 possible morph combinations! Eeny meeny miny moe...

Take a stud male with 5 morphs and pair him to a female with 4 morphs. End result? Each kid will be 1 of up to 256 possible morph combinations!! Uh, time to get creative....

Finally, take a stud male with 5 morphs and pair him to a superstar female with 5 morphs. End result? Each kid will be 1 of up to 512 possible morph combinations!!! Forgetaboutit.

Safe to say that in a couple years when you buy a high dollar hatchling snake, you aren't going to know what morphs are in its blood. You certainly won't have a guarantee. Best you can get will be a guarantee of possibilities. Sure you could guess at what the ingredients are based on the known trates of the parents.... But that is just it... It will be nothing more then a guess. And the more complicated the parents get, the more clueless you will be with the kids.

Right now people mostly buy expensive snakes because they find one they particularly like, and they want to make another one. Or maybe they want to reproduce it doing something slightly different. When buying a snake with 10 morphs you pretty much have to accept up front that you will likely never make a snake that looks anything like the origional you are about to spend big money on.

What effect will this have on pricing? I believe it will be the end of the super high dollar snakes. Sure it is a way off, but it is coming.

Your thoughts?

Mikey

[llovelace]

......My head hurts

[kevinb]

I have felt this way since I got into balls. Watching some of the big breeder videos on yt, and hearing them say...well not really sure what this is....makes me worry. Sure sometimes they know what it is and don't want to say, but I really do feel they don't 100% know.

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[HerpIsAhobby]

I was just thinking about this the other day. I was watching a video from NERD and just looking at all the amazing crosses I was left thinking there is no way he knows whats in that for sure. Like you said sure you can take an educated guess but people have enough trouble identifying morphs with 3 genes in them so 5+ is going to be a crap shoot. I personally think its going to increase the price of good looking creations on a case by case basis. If you create a beautiful Mojave x spider x yellowbelly x pin blah blah blah then if someone wants it there is no way to to get that snake other than to buy it from you.

[mechnut450]

yeah it scary to think at time you goingo t have to give away the base stuff like butters/lessers and othe base guys and I am still struggling to produce the basics, it almost enought to make me want ot get out casue I never be able to sell,trade my base snakes out and i going to get overrun with the normals and othe snakes in rescues. ( almost there due to the size of my last rescue lot.)

I almost wish that there was a longer time between breeding for bps just to keep the market from being flooded.

[JulieInNJ]

......My head hurts

x2

...and my calculator broke trying to figure it all out...

Personally, being relatively new to the bp world, I find it hard to differentiate between a lot of the multi gene morphs, but I know an albino when I see one . I think the new people coming into the bp world will always start with the easier visual morphs so I don't think those will ever go out of style. As for combo breeding, honestly, we may get to a point where these snakes' genetics get so convoluted that we have to back up and go back to square one.

[JLC]

Personally, I find the whole concept pretty exciting. Yes...I can see where it would make people nervous...but for me, it'd be an adventure in breeding, with each egg being its own little treasure chest of surprises.

I truly believe there will always be a strong market for many of the basic or simple combos like bees or POGs or what-have-you. These are gorgeous snakes in their own rights, and careful selective breeding of the best of the best help them to continue to grow in both beauty and popularity.

Sure, there will always be breeders with huge collections and enough stock to create some crazy-big combos...and some of those crazy-big combos will make it out into the mainstream market eventually. In time, we'll see smaller hobbyists being able to embark on the same sort of treasure hunt as they explore all these different possible combos. But I truly believe that MOST people who keep ball pythons will continue to be enamored with and strive to produce high quality base and simple-combo morphs.

[LotsaBalls]

IMO, the best way it can go is the route were people start breeding for the best examples both visually and physically. A good number of the 4 plus gene animals look very similar. No, not all but a lot. And why would you want a "powerhouse" breeder for $25k that is six different base morphs. Unless it's three different supers.

[PitOnTheProwl]

There are a lot that I like out there but most of my favorites stop at 2 or 3 gene.
Yeah it would be great to have one 5+ gene male and a whole bunch of single gene females but you still dont know how the odds will turn.
If I get to that point I may want one or two but for the time being I am just happy having quality examples of single and doubles.

[snake lab]

I agree that it is going to drastically change the market and i think we will be seeing the trend sooner then later. There are some heavy hitting morphs that are doing this vary thing now. The question is when are they going to be in market. I also agree it will affect the high pricing market but i also think once it happens it will bring down the high dollar market and create a more stable market on you 2 and 3 gene animals. Once we start seeing spiders and bees and lessers etc in the big box pet stores is when we will see this thing coming full circle