Super cinnamons/black pastels?

[Brandon Osborne]

There are a lot of good arguments in this post for why not to produce super black pastel / cinnamon. I have to admit that they made me second guess the ethics and motives behind why I want to produce super black pastels. For me what ball python breeding comes down to is striving to creating a new morph and people enjoying the diversity of these animals.


I dont believe the people who have a passion for this go out to intentionally cause harm but genetics and selective breeding are a gamble, bad things happen. We know that super form of these animals have problems but regardless i am drawn to them. I see people ask from time to time " what morph should I buy " and the reply I often see is "go with what you like" , i like super black pastels because they are awesome looking animals. To the best of my ability I will try to produce healthy animals but I will fall short some of the time. I also breed rats to be feed to my snakes which some people find horrible but to the best of my ability I treat them humanly and with respect.

Everyone will have there own opinion on this subject but for those of us that like the supers we have to weight the pros and cons for ourselves and not be dissuaded by other people's opinions.

This is the best response I've seen yet on this thread. No one wants to hatch babies that will have to be put down. You will see good and bad with all aspects of breeding snakes. If you want to hear about heartache, just ask anyone that has kept and bred a number of green tree pythons.....losing an entire clutch of beautiful babies because they absolutely refuse all attempts at getting them to bite and eat.

We do this out of passion. Sometimes passion gets the best of us. If you've been doing this for a long time, you will have had your fair share of negative results, even with things you never expected. The choice is always up to the keeper. Take a pass, or take a chance and produce animals like this.