Want to get into making Pieds, but I have questions...

[Juicebøx]

I posted this question on WOB, but I wanted to post it here too, just incase there are people here that have different/better ideas, and vice versa.

I am moving some snake around to fund a pied project, but I'm wondering what the best way to start is...


Should I get a het trio (1.2), or go the route of getting a visual male and het pied female, or het male and a visual female? I don't think I will have enough money to get a visual and 2 hets, unless I can find them for CRAZY cheap. Here are some of my thoughts going into this process...

1. I really like the idea of getting a visual female, and then either pairing her with a het... or pairing her with a mojave to make hets for White Gold... (question about that below).
2. If I get a visual male, I then have to find hets or visuals that are large enough to breed, or get them small and wait for them to grow.
3. I think the cheapest way to get into the pied mix is the 1.2 het trio, but it has the most risk (making sure the snakes I get are actually het pied) and the lowest chance of producing what I actually want.

With the above options, what am I missing when trying to find a good setup for the future? I like the idea of having a visual female, because then if I decide to change directions with a pied project (like going from White Golds to Pumpkin Pied), I don't have to worry about growing another female. I can make/buy the het male, and roll the dice that way (instead of having to wait three years while I grow a het female). At least with males they can be ready to go in 12-18 months.


Is there a better way to go trying to get into the Pied market? I don't care which morph sells for what amount, or any of that crap... I am just trying to start with the best possible situation, so that I don't have to "restart" later. I want to build a solid foundation, instead of getting a bunch of "junk morphs" that I don't really like just to sell them later on down the road.


For those of you with established Pied projects, what did you wish you knew before you got into the morph? For those of you just getting started in the morph, what did you find allowed you to get in the fastest? And for those in my situation (looking in from the outside), what are your thoughts as to how to start?

[MootWorm]

First off, what's your budget? Ideally, I'd get a visual male and one or two female hets if you can swing it. I'm not at the point where I need to pick up my male yet, but when I do, I'll get a codom+het male to go for a morph pied. I would also recommend getting your females now and holding off on the male for a year. Two female hets would run you about 200 bucks, maybe less of you can get a deal buying from the same breeder. Get your male later because A) you won't have to 'waste' a year feeding him and B) he'll be much cheaper in a year. If you can afford it, get some morph het pied females now. Just my .02

[Darkbird]

I agree with holding off on the male for now, you won't need him for a year or two anyway. I would say that starting with visuals is worth it, at least to me. Wnt with hets for my albino project, and it'll be torture proving them out. With hets, even 100% hets, there is still a good chance of only getting normals, and then you have to breed them another year or two to prove them out. I ended up with buying a visual albino male so that I can prove out my het females, then even if odds go against me I will at least know they are hets. I have decided through all this that from now on I will start all my reccessive projects with visuals. For me I'd rather save up and be ahead of the game when I do get there.

[Morphing Unicorn]

I agree with these guys. I just purchased a hatchling pastel pied male that should be here in a couple of weeks; however, the reason I did was due to the fact that I have a friend who is letting me buy one of his proven breeder het females. He is giving me a pretty killer deal, with letting me buy the female now and breeding her this year to one of his pied males, so I will get the clutch and then have the female for next year after my little guy puts enough weight on to breed.

I am leaning toward this theory of buying a female het lavender albino now and probably picking up the male visual lav albino within 6-12 months. It is harder for me to do this because having the visual morph before the het has its "appearance advantages" but it just makes much more sense to pick up the female first.

Plus picking up the male visual morph gives you the option to put him to other het females (if you hold back some from clutches). Just my .02

[Pythonfriend]

when it comes to effectivity and breeding plans, i find this article to be most helpful:

http://ballpythonbreeder.com/2012/02...thon-breeders/

its a large amount of very good advice.

you want to buy females first, and males one year later, for example. Also you should try to generally have a male that is genetically more powerful than the female in every breeding.

one plan could be: get a visual female now, and one year later get a male that is 100% het and has an extra gene. when you hit your visual male pied + extra gene, then that will be your primary breeding male, and you can buy (or make) female 100% hets + extra genes to keep improving the project. after a few years you should have a nice little breeding group with visual + extra gene males and females.

visual to het is very good because you get visuals with a 50% chance, and the hets you get will all be 100% hets. 66% possible hets are difficult to sell and can be a pain to prove out.

[Morphing Unicorn]

when it comes to effectivity and breeding plans, i find this article to be most helpful:

http://ballpythonbreeder.com/2012/02...thon-breeders/

its a large amount of very good advice.

you want to buy females first, and males one year later, for example. Also you should try to generally have a male that is genetically more powerful than the female in every breeding.

one plan could be: get a visual female now, and one year later get a male that is 100% het and has an extra gene. when you hit your visual male pied + extra gene, then that will be your primary breeding male, and you can buy (or make) female 100% hets + extra genes to keep improving the project. after a few years you should have a nice little breeding group with visual + extra gene males and females.

visual to het is very good because you get visuals with a 50% chance, and the hets you get will all be 100% hets. 66% possible hets are difficult to sell and can be a pain to prove out.

All great advice! Also, if you guys haven't read Collin Weaver's other blog entries (Pythonfriend's link is one of his blog entries), I highly recommend them. They are usually packed full of great info!

[JoshR324]

Great info and advice in here!


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[V2 HeX]

Pieds is a great project! As of right now i have a visual male and het female(she waiting breed). The reason i got the visual male is i can make 100% hets every time i pair him with any female. I have began the process of stufing him out to some friends codoms and taking pick of clutch when they hatch(getting my future co dom hets for free basicly). I also have plans to buy a visual female, because if all else fails i can make 100% pieds from pairing the two. Next on the list will be a coral glow male(just because i love coral glow pieds ;-) ). All recessive projects are a pain, but in my opinion the most rewarding.

I would avoid the het trio. You only have a 25% chance per egg of creating a visual, and on top of that any hets you create will.only be 50% hets. Making them incredibly hard to sell and prove out.

Best of luck with your pied project :-) who know if you have sucess, i may end up being a customer one day LOL

[Pythonfriend]

i agree, you have 4 possible pairings to consider and 3 of them just make more sense than the last.

- visual to visual is obviously nice, clutches of 100% visual pieds, also you can combine extra genes the visuals may have.
- visual to 100% het is nice because you get more visuals and more 100% hets. also when the het has extra genes, you get visuals with these extra genes.
- visual to normal + extra genes is also nice when it produces 100% hets with extra genes that you dont already have. and 100% het females even withot extra genes still sell well.

- 100% het to 100% het is just the worst choice compared to all the other 3 for reasons that were already mentioned. Getting an early visual is just a smart move for any recessive project.

[Juicebøx]

So I don't understand about the "logic" behind always pairing a superior male to an inferior female... I know that this refers to value of the morph, and not the number of genes in the snake, but I don't understand why. It takes so much longer to raise a female up so with a recessive morph, using the superior male means that I have to make a het female of the morph I want, wait for her to grow... and then breed to her.

As an example of what I'm talking about... If I get het pied females, and then get a yellow belly pied, I have a good chance of making more yellow belly pied. The problem is, if I decide that I want to change over to make white gold, I have to change out my male completely or make a new het pied female, and grow her up before I can start. If I were to get a pied female, and then use a yellow belly 100% het pied, I have the same chances to make the yellow belly pied... but then when I make the switch to make white gold, it's only 12-18 months to grow a mojave 100% het pied in order to start making white gold instead of 2-3 years to grow the female.

Basically, I understand that everyone says "the male should be more valuable that the female"... but WHY? What is it that I'm missing in the genetic puzzle?

one plan could be: get a visual female now, and one year later get a male that is 100% het and has an extra gene. when you hit your visual male pied + extra gene, then that will be your primary breeding male, and you can buy (or make) female 100% hets + extra genes to keep improving the project. after a few years you should have a nice little breeding group with visual + extra gene males and females.

visual to het is very good because you get visuals with a 50% chance, and the hets you get will all be 100% hets. 66% possible hets are difficult to sell and can be a pain to prove out.

This advice is exactly what I want to do, but it's "wrong" according to the article, because I shouldn't put an inferior male to superior female.