It really depends on how long you want to wait till you get a visual morph offspring. Only way to get a morph in your first litter is to purchase a dominant or co-dom morph female. If your money is limited as well, there are many co-dom morphs you can go with. Pastels, spiders, Mojaves are probably the three most common and females aren't too costly.

If you want to go for a long haul, then a 100% het of one of the many recessive morphs or buy a visible morph to breed to your normal (and produce all 100% hets which you can later sell or breed back to your visible morph female). Recessive morphs that don't cost alot would be Albino. Females tend to be more expensive but prices are going down for many. Pieds are still quite a bit depending on the white percentages.

It may be a good idea to buy a pair of 100% het snakes, even though you already have a normal male. Your male could be 'fresh blood' to breed to offspring of the het pair (have about a 25% chance per egg for the offspring to be of the visual morph. If female you could breed her to your normal male for 'fresh' 100% hets to sell, or breed back to the original 100% het pair)

Cheapest way would be to buy a pastel, spider or mojave female. Then use money made from selling the offspring to buy something else, or keep a male of that morph to breed to the female in a couple years and get 'supers' of that form. (though there doesn't appearn to be any super form of a Spider)
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PHLdyPayne

[ Hide Replies ]

• New to ball python Hobby Breeding... - jack2682, Wed Sep 2 13:54:43 2009
• RE: New to ball python Hobby Breeding... - PHLdyPayne, Wed Sep 2 14:31:30 2009
• Hi Jack!!!! - mikebell, Wed Sep 2 18:30:25 2009
• true BUT - TimS, Wed Sep 2 19:38:06 2009
• RE: true BUT - mikebell, Wed Sep 2 20:24:37 2009
• I forgot to ask - mikebell, Wed Sep 2 20:33:52 2009
• RE: I forgot to ask - TimS, Thu Sep 3 01:12:58 2009
• You still didn't explain - mikebell, Thu Sep 3 07:26:51 2009
• RE: You still didn't explain - TimS, Thu Sep 3 09:40:57 2009
• You over stated yourself - mikebell, Thu Sep 3 11:48:55 2009
• RE: You over stated yourself - pardalis, Thu Sep 3 13:47:06 2009
• RE: You over stated yourself - toddbecker, Thu Sep 3 18:21:39 2009
• You're one year ahead. - mikebell, Thu Sep 3 21:13:23 2009
• RE: true BUT - thunderpaws, Fri Sep 4 22:32:57 2009
• Your fine - Pardalis, Sat Sep 5 19:50:48 2009