I personally believe that it depends on your business plan. Are you wanting to work on developing new morphs or crossing morphs? Do you want to produce all the different morphs in larger quantities? Do you want to be big? Do you want to keep things on a hobby level? Do you want a quick return on your investment? Do you have a few years or more to sit on your investment?

In all actuality any morph is a great investment. It would depend more on how much time you want to wait.

Quickest turn around are going to be the dominant and co-dominant morphs (pastel, spider, mojave etc.). They also drop faster in price than the other morphs.

Simple recessive genetics are going to take you longer to make your money back, but hold prices longer.

The way I see it is that no matter what you spend on your morphs, you will certainly make your money back and then some. High priced ball pythons are only a niche market. The pet trade hasn't even been touched with ball python morphs as of yet. Now that pastels are coming down as well as some of the previously high priced hets, the pet industry is starting to take notice. There will NEVER be one breeder large enough to fill the demand for morphs once they start reaching the pet trade.

Pastels for instance are still selling for 800-1200 for males and 1500-2500 for females. This year we will most certainly see a drop in pastel prices once again. The average pet owner who has been eyeing the ball morphs is very excited because he/she has the 5,6,700 bucks to drop on a pet.

Lets look at a hypothetical situation. Lets use the pastel as the morph since it is now coming down to pet trade prices. You could potentially breed say 10 pastel males to 5 normal females each, totaling 50 normal females. With an average of 6 eggs per female that would make 300 eggs. (Of course you won't always have exactly six eggs and all females may not become gravid but this is strictly hypothetical).

Out of 300 hypothetical eggs approx. 50% will be pastel. That brings our totals to 150 pastels. If pastels are selling for lets say $500.00 at the time, do the math on that. That comes to $75,000.00 Pretty good return for one season of breeding from just 10 pastel males! Not evening mentioning super pastels from the 10 females you held back last year! And lest we forget the other 150 captive bred normals that seem to be so scarce on the pet markets. Sell these or save the females for future breeders.

It just snow balls and snow balls.

So, in my opinion, it really depends on how big you want to be and your return investment goals. If someone doesn't have a huge amount of capital, then there is still money to be made. But most of all ball pythons are a joy to work with. I can't imagine anyone having this much fun and excitement in an office!

So, in my opinion, any and all morphs are a great investment. Even the red headed step child of ball pythons..... pastels!!!!!




-----
Steve Garrett

info@serpentireali.com

www.serpentireali.com

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