dont even consider breeding these single gene males to normal females. just to make that clear.

if you want these 3 normal females, get a better male for that.

this being said, i think there is one alternative. so, you are now stuck with pastel, yellowbelly and het ultramel.

males grow up rapidly. much faster than females. so the counter-intuitive strategy would be: get a double gene female that works well with yellowbelly. something with fire and/or enchi. something nice, a really nice double gene female. and then go against the rules and breed your yellowbelly male to that double gene female. chances are 1 in 8 that you hit the triple gene, male or female, and 3 in 8 that you hit a double gene, male or female. now what you really want is to get a double gene male or triple gene male from that very first clutch. chances for that are 1 in 4. the female triple gene would also be a holdback. anyway, hope for that male, double or triple gene, raise it up, and replace that single-gene yellowbelly male.

lets say you do this with two females, both very nice double-gene females. breed the male to both, get a holdback male, breed the holdback to the other female, to combine the genes from the first female with the genes from the second female.

the problem is, you got a single-gene pastel male as well. yellowbelly has some potential, pastel is everywhere. adding pastel to stuff gets you nowhere, pastel has already been added to everything and the combos that work well with pastel have been figured out. a male pewter or pastave or bee is cheap enough, basic double gene combos with pastel are abundant on the market.

then there is the het ultramel male. you could play a game similar to what i outlined for the yellowbelly. get a visual ultramel enchi female. hope to get a visual ultramel male, with or without enchi, in the first clutch, replace dad as soon as possible.


this breaks many rules of thumb, but it follows some other rules: to progress, both the male and the female have to contribute something. and females are important, get females first, and in your situation with 3 males and no females, it simplifies into: get females.

if you want to work with normal females, you better have a triple gene powerhouse male, otherwise it makes no sense. and if you want to work with the het ultramel male and the yellowbelly male you have now (forget the pastel), better get awesome females, hope to hatch out males that can replace dad, and quickly raise them up.

in a perfect world, you would stay away from basic single-gene codominant males and het males and would also stay away from normal females. but the situation is what it is.


by the way, a while back, BHB reptiles had an offer: 3 normal ball python hatchlings for 50 dollars, you choose the gender. it was a special offer, but it was available for at least a month or two. so if you are going to spend a whopping 50 dollars on 3 female hatchlings, better make sure they come from one of the best breeders in the business and that they are in perfect health and have eaten. now, starting from this value, add 2 or 3 years of food, not sustenance feeding, but feeding for weight gain. calculate the cost. and when you consider the cost of the amount of food that it takes to get a female up to size, with an initial investment of 16.70 dollars for the female, you get a value. and when you find big females on the market that are cheaper than that, then you know that they are pets and that noone buys them to breed them. when the price for big females matches the result of your calculation, then you know that raising them up is a zero-sum game. such calculations should influence your decisions, there is work associated with each BP, and there are running costs, i only mentioned food.