Ideas for next snake purchase

[chadphillips8352]

Greetings, all.

My wife and I have been greatly enjoying all of our ball pythons. We're getting ready to place an order for our first rack system, and we're already planning to get something larger than we currently need because we know we're going to be buying more snakes soon. There are a couple of Repticons that are coming to our area in the next several months. We are definitely planning to go to the one in April, which is in Atlanta, and plan on doing our next purchases there (Unless we get a good deal on something before then). Unfortunately, we're having a hard time deciding what we want to get! With so many choices, it doesn't seem like any of them are wrong. I thought I might get a few insights from some of the awesome people here on the forums.

Currently, we have seven ball pythons, and plan on probably getting two more. We have four males and three females of different morphs.

Males
Normal
Cinny-Pin
Yellow-Belly
Bumble Bee

Females
Spider
Fire
Het Albino

We eventually hope to breed some snakes, and our last purchase was designed around that. I don't plan on breeding my male normal (He's more of my son's snake, and we're way more interested in trying to get different kinds of morphs), or the yellow-belly to begin with (Got a good deal on him, but not seeing anything that jumps out at me as far as breeding projects go. Maybe later on when I have some 3 or 4 gene animals). I'm not opposed to breeding my het albino, but I'm not even sure she is a het. She was sold to us by a dealer as a het, but I knew even less about BP's then than I do now, so I did not think to get more info.

The goal is to breed, once they get to size of course, the bumble bee to the fire and the Cinny-Pin to the Spider. We think it gives us a lot of good possibilities in the offspring, and hitting three gene animals with either pairing would be awesome. We are trying to figure out what would be good ideas to add to our breeding pool in the future. We like the idea of getting double gene males because we can breed them to multiple females, and we're not quite ready to start spending on 3 & 4 gene animals when making our own seems like a lot of fun. We've been thinking about enchi, mojave, and lessers (Possible an enchi lesser/enchi mojave male and a single gene female of the other). What kind of suggestions would you guys suggest?

I look forward to hearing your input!

[bcr229]

Butter/lesser female
Either a visual albino male for the het female, or if you don't want to start a recessive project then either a mohave or black pastel female.

[FireStorm]

Well, you have a het Albino female, so finding a morph male that is also het Albino, or an Albino combo male, or an Albino male wouldn't be a bad thing.

Personally, I love YB complex stuff, so I would get a YB female, YB combo female, or Specter female if this was my collection. But I know you said that's not your thing so that is probably not all that helpful.

With what you have now, I would focus on females rather than males so you don't end up too male heavy. Get some nice females, raise them up, and then you can always add a more powerful male later on since males mature faster.

[joeagost]

Get multi gene females and then get powerhouse males in the future

[JMinILM]

you need more females. Either some single gene ones or some double gene combos. Which ones is a matter of taste really. There are so many different ones to choose from.

[Pythonfriend]

yep females is the way to go.

you have two double-gene males, a single-gene male, and a (not useful for breeding) normal male. in my count thats two really good breeder males, and one still quite acceptable backup breeder male (the single-gene yellowbelly).

and 3 females. but with these 2 breeder males and one backup breeder male, you could go up to 6 females.

i would say the next 3 purchases need to be females, and then you can consider another male. or, get more females, and breed what you have, you might just hit a nice triple-gene male, or double-gene males that have gene combinations that you like, that you can hold back and raise up. so maybe you dont need to buy another male for a looong time.

diffidcult to see what best to do with the het albino female. maybe just treat her as a normal and breed her with one of the two-gene males, for extra eggs and for maybe two-gene female hatchlings. and maybe one day, when you decide you want to make some albinos, get a visual albino male. but het albinos are quite cheap, not much more expensive than normals, so its not a waste when you dont make use if it.

about what morphs to choose..... there are so many threads about this already, and new threads about this question keep coming in. just look around.

like for example: http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...-to-start-with just check whats mentioned in this thread and in similar threads, and see what you like the most, what is most appealing to you.

[Emilio]

I would get a Enchi Lesser F or Lesser mojave BEl F.

[chadphillips8352]

Well, we ended up getting rid of our yellow-belly male. Found a nice family that had been wanting a younger ball python, so we were able to help them get one.

We ended up going to Repticon in Atlanta the other weekend and picked up a female mojave. Planning on possibly getting a female black pastel next, and trying to get some black widows. If I decide to get another male, it will probably end up being a mystic or mystic pastel in order to try and get some mystic potions from that mojave. Keeping my options open at this point.

[Pythonfriend]

Well, we ended up getting rid of our yellow-belly male. Found a nice family that had been wanting a younger ball python, so we were able to help them get one.

We ended up going to Repticon in Atlanta the other weekend and picked up a female mojave. Planning on possibly getting a female black pastel next, and trying to get some black widows. If I decide to get another male, it will probably end up being a mystic or mystic pastel in order to try and get some mystic potions from that mojave. Keeping my options open at this point.

sounds like you made some excellent choices.

you can hold off on getting a male for a few years. you have two decent 2-gene-males, when you buy another female black pastel, you have 5 females. thats fine. and when you get eggs, it will be 50% males and 50% females, but the male holdbacks reach sexual maturity round about 1 year before the females do. also, when you pick up a female hatchling, worry about getting a male hatchling for her 1 year later. basically you have time to save up, and you save 1 year of caring for another snake, and you can sit back and watch the prices fall for a year, and then go for a powerhouse male. in your case maybe a mystic potion or super mystic (or a purple passion or a super phantom).