Quality of Snakes- Kaitala's burning question #1

[Skiploder]

So I have 6 BPs, 5 female, Pied, Cinnamon and 3 normals, and one spider male. Picking up a het pied male today for the Pied female. We've bred before, but this is what the collection is down to now.

It's been a long time since I followed reptile markets and there are tons of new morphs.

But I'm wondering, with no true "morph standards", how does one choose high quality animals to breed? So much of BPs seem to be personal preference anyway, how do I know that my spider male has genes worth passing on? My Pied is pretty and high white, but low whites can throw high white and vice versa, so that isn't a genetic standard, some yellow snakes brown out over time, but that doesn't mean they don't throw snakes that stay yellow, etc.

In a market where there are SO many snakes, I wonder how to measure quality of any I might pick up, of what I have, and whether or not mine are worth even breeding (the pied is going to be bred, obviously, if I'm picking up a mate for her.)

It's easier in the dog world. They have the standards for "show" quality and "pet" quality.


Thanks for your input.

It's all aesthetics...just like in the dog show world, where a show quality dog does not necessarily mean a dog that is (1) capable of doing what it was bred to do or (2) is of sound mind and body.

There are naturally occurring snake species that have been deemed aesthetically inferior to line bred animals. An example of this are black tailed cribos.

In many areas, a black tailed cribo actually has a brown or body colored tail. Instead of embracing what mother nature has created and breeding these animals true to their locality, they are sneeringly dubbed "brown-tails" by dumbass breeders whose sole goal is to make a buck. These Cribo breeders then line breed their animals to produce traits that they feel are more aesthetically pleasing.

It has come to my attention recently that some health issues are rearing their heads in the cribo world...issues that haven't been a concern until recently. Issues that many of us predicted years ago (hat tip to Mean Old Don Pogue).

Same with purebred show dogs. You breed for form instead of function and you have problems. Read and watch "Pedigree Dogs Exposed" if you want to see the horrors of what breeding for looks has done to the dog world.

To get back your your question, "true morph standards" exist in the eyes of the self-appointed Gods of the ball python world. If some idiot who's sole claim to fame is that he can get lots of ball python morphs to have sex with other ball pythons morphs states that one type of morph is superior to another form, then the sheeple agree.

I'd measure the quality by the health of the animal. Does it feed, shed and crap normally? Good. Is it free of inbreeding induced health issues? Good.

Is the animal attractive to YOU? Excellent.

In a market where a snake is worth $10K today and a mere fraction of that in a year, I'd say that it doesn't matter anyway.