Thrifty purchasing...

[Pythonfriend]

The problem i see when you start out with low-quality pastels and work towards higher quality is not that it isnt possible. It is definitively possible.

The problem is that others have been there and have done it successfully after starting in 1995. You can decide to start from scratch, or you can decide to stand on the shoulders of giants. I dont see why you should pretend that it is still 1995, and start from scratch, when others have already done it, and you can make use of their work by paying a bit more for an absolutely stellar pastel.

The second problem is the market. The market for basic single-gene morphs is saturated and dead. In the end, many of these end up on craigslist for free, or end up in reptile sanctuaries, or end up in even worse situation. When buying animals for breeding, you should not buy from that bottom tier of the market, and when breeding, you should try to produce animals that are better than that. The problem is real, and hatching more normals and more low-quality pastels and normal-looking hets will make the problem worse.

So i would be open to the idea that it is 2014, not 1995, and that you can buy the genes that others have been refining for 20 years.


Others are producing stellar pastels as a side-product of their multi-gene projects right now. Other breeders that start out with single-gene morphs will buy an absolutely stellar pastel right now. So when your plan is successful, what will you have accomplished? You will have accomplished nothing that others did not already accomplish in 2005. But you will have contributed to the problem that more and more normals end up in reptile sanctuaries and in other bad situations. You will have produced feeders for snakes that eat other snakes.

I take a great deal of pride in every thing I do. If in 7 years from now some one bought a snake from me I would want to proudly say that I myself know it's lineage and put the time and effort into it to produce this animal. If I were to buy from an already really reputable breeder I feel like it wouldn't have as much personal value at this time as I'm not too familiar with the community and still a newb. So the hard work of the breeder would barely be recognized by me.

7 years from now, people will assume your stellar super pastel was the by-product of a 6-gene to 4-gene breeding, or that you purchased really really good pastels in 2008 or something. Noone will care about your story how you turned crappy pastels into nice pastels, because you did it 20 years too late. 7 years from now, other people that start with absolutely stellar examples of single-gene morphs today in 2014, will produce these stellar single-gene morphs from multi-gene to multi-gene breedings. So noone will be interested in buying your stuff.

People are interested in stellar quality pastels and fires and yellowbellys and mojaves TODAY, but in 7 years, new and aspiring breeders wont touch these with a 7-foot pole. They will look for stellar examples of enchi clown, and stellar examples of striped purple passions, and stellar jigsaws and stellar pastave enchis and stellar lightning pieds. If you can get personal pride out of that scenario, then thats good, because that will be pretty much the only thing you get out of it.

Line-breeding still makes sense, but it works differently now. For example, someone might adjust his pairings in such a way that he hatches out many mochis and many super enchi mojaves. And out of these dozens of mochis and super enchi mojaves, he will hold back the top 2% or the top 5%. So he will refine the mochi combo and the super enchi mojave combo until they reach show quality and people will need their sunglasses when they get posted in the picture section. And it will be a side-project, and he will try to get some high quality fire or banana into it and things like that. And in 7 years at a reptile show people ask "WHAAAT? thats really just a super mochi, you mean, just super enchi and mojave? OMG thats the best super enchi mojave ive ever seen, i cannot believe its really just these 3 genes". And your stellar basic single-gene morphs will be hard to sell for 50 dollars.

I appreciate people that are passionate about refining genes and line-breeding, they do great work and are important, stacking up the genes is one part of it, refining the genes is just as important. So i like it when people successfully pull off a project like this, and i like the results (Brian Gundys Mojaves come to mind). But it needs to make sense. Maybe Brian Gundy started the project with average mojaves, or with any mojaves he could get, so it started out similar to how you want to start out. But he started much earlier, when things were different, and is getting rewarded for it right now.