Quote Originally Posted by Newbie Ball View Post
You have some good arguments but unfortunately not everyone has the money for quality breed. In order for me to have any money at all for Vet / Feed costs, Cages, I need to stick to $200-300 pythons. not to say I won't look for quality in the pythons I buy. I want the best of the best, but it's not always a option for everybody. I just need to stay in my ball park while looking for quality breed.


What ever happen to start out small and work your way up?
If you want to breed simple one or two gene morphs, there is no reason for you to go out and spend tens of thousands on the latest multi-gene morph. If you prefer single gene morphs, that's where you should spend your money. But that being said, you should be willing to pay whatever it takes to buy the highest quality of that morph you can find. Don't have the money now? Wait until you do. There's no need to sacrifice the vet fund, but there is a need to be patient.

I personally am starting "small" with a few single and double gene morphs. I'm new to all the different morphs (though not new to genetics by any means), and need some time to figure it all out. I'm also starting out with babies that won't even be old enough to breed for a couple years. That gives me time to really read up on everything I need to know before starting, and figure out if that's what I really want to do. HOWEVER, I also personally prefer the simple single and double gene morphs. I *personally* am not a huge fan of the "powerhouse" morphs that have multiple genes. That's personal preference and that's ok. So I will work on breeding the best quality of the simple morphs, if I decide to breed,and be successful at that. If a certain simple morph's market value is $150, I'm probably not going to have to worry about spending $600 on even the best one I could find.


Quote Originally Posted by dave partington View Post
What if a lot of those 'low quality' morphs were simply het for undisclosed wonderful things?
If there were no 'low quality' BPs, would there would be 'high quality' BPs?
This is one thing I noticed while breeding rats... A "low quality" black rat (one who is faded or browned out, not good for show) had very strong potential of carrying hidden recessives, especially mink and beige. Also when the Burmese rat became popular a lot of breeders started advocating breeding low quality Siamese (one without good shading) into the Burmese to strengthen up the points of the Burmese. (I personally preferred to breed a high quality Siamese into my Burmese and get very good points and keep good quality Siamese instead of sacrificing one for the other, and personally never saw a problem with having shading on a Burmese, personally thought it made them look nicer actually!) If that can be transferred to snakes as well, it is possible there may be a place for "low quality" in improving or producing other morphs. Someone just needs to prove that now!