Reptile & Amphibian Forums

For the life of me I am assuming that most of you are like me and would use your credit cards in order to afford some of these morphs. Spiders, bumble bees pastels, etc...
I would love to get another ball (a morph would be nice..) but, I can't seem to grasp how y'all are buying these babies unless A.) You're a breeder, B.) You're loaded, or C.)You have a hefty credit card bill. Like I said I'd love to buy a morph, but none of the above options apply to me. Its not like I'm broke but, DAMN..these morphs are expensive. Some are easily a downpayment on a car or have the price tag of a car. Any ideas on more affortable ball morphs? How'd you get them?
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1.0 Green Iguana
1.0 Bearded Dragon
0.1 Blizard Leopard Gecko
1.1.1 Corn Snakes (2 Blood Red, 1 Orange Amelanistic)
1.1 Ball Python

I spent about $20K over about 5 years. I bought some het pairs, and some nice females. Once you have animals you can trade, you move up. You do not need to spend huge money, just be smart. Buy a trio of Het Pieds, a couple of Het Hypo females, a Hypo male, and a trio of Albinos/Het Albinos. Go from there. You cannot have too many Pastel females either.

Dave

Well pastels are something I am interested in. What would be a reasonable price for 1 male or 1 female. Any breeder suggestions?
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1.0 Green Iguana
1.0 Bearded Dragon
0.1 Blizard Leopard Gecko
1.1.1 Corn Snakes (2 Blood Red, 1 Orange Amelanistic)
1.1 Ball Python

With Pastels, there are two rules of thumb. The first, and the one I think is your best bet, is to buy one you love the look of. The more yellow, and less orange, the better, as the orange is what usually browns out. The second is to pick a line you like, and pick the best animal you can find from that line. Buy NICE normal females too, because I am convinced that the better the normal female, the better the Pastels she will produce.

pics very nice. what is it a cross maybe?
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billy jean king
BugBusters

The first pic in the previous post was a Ghost male in shed, which I think is a cool picture, laying on top of the Mojave cross female adult. She is not a Mojave, but the female that produced the Mojaves and Mojave crosses, seen in the third pic. The second pic is an EmberBall, 05 animal and 100% Het Hypo.

These pics are the original Ember female, then the original Mojave cross female, and a close up of the Mojave cross females scales. She is amazing.

Dave

Here are some of the babies they have produced....

Mojave and Mojave cross, and second pic is normal Pastel and Pastel cross, from the Mojave cross female.

Last pic just hatched yesterday, and is a Pastel Ember.

Dave

I get my snakes by saving cash, I hate credit cards.

Me too! I actively trying to pay down mine and I don't want to use them for a long time.
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1.0 Green Iguana
1.0 Bearded Dragon
0.1 Blizard Leopard Gecko
1.1.1 Corn Snakes (2 Blood Red, 1 Orange Amelanistic)
1.1 Ball Python

i know what you mean. Ive been saving for my 1st Albino since May and i still wont probably have enough till NOVEMBER! And they are cheap right now.

or just get a night job for a couple of months. this whole hobby has gotten very affordable in the last year or two. there are male pastels for sale all over the place for a few hundred bucks, pairs of albino and ghost hets are only a little more. spider and mojave males and pairs of pied hets are all around a grand. there are hardly any projects you can't buy into for a couple thousand bucks, and that's lawn mowing for a summer. just get motivated, be smart on your purchases, take real good care of your animals, and like emberball said, once you have babies, it all opens up to you. go for it, enjoy yourself. kd

November sounds like a good month to get a new snake. Heck it can be your x-mas present to yourself. you will also find that during this time people are willing to deal a little more so they can get their children those new toys they have been begging for all year. Also if you have to wait until feb-march the snakes will be bigger and some breeders will be needing room for the hatchlings they will be getting in a few months. it's all relative as to when you have the money or how fast you want the snake. It took us 2 years to save up the money for our vanilla male and it will take us another few years to get all the morphs we want to add to our collection/breeding group.
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons:::

1.0 striped vanilla
1.2 Citrus Ghost and hets
1.2 Albino and hets
2.3 het Pied
1.1 Pastel (male has additional gene going on with him)
a bunch of female holdbacks and several rescue normal males

0.1 columbian boa, she's a feeding monster, controls my
over production of rats, lol
0.1 brazilian rainbow boa, another rat eating monster
1.1 corns

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

Josh, any new pics of the Vanilla? The stripe makes your vanilla a nice and unique animal, I like it!

Dave

no new pics of him but I will take some new ones of him sometime this week. He's deep in shed so he looks, well ugly, lol. He's been eating great and is up over 1100g. He should give us some really nice vanilla's next spring and to no surpise we will be holding back almost if not every female. Now if we can find a good sized YB female to put him with .
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons:::

1.0 striped vanilla
1.2 Citrus Ghost and hets
1.2 Albino and hets
2.3 het Pied
1.1 Pastel (male has additional gene going on with him)
a bunch of female holdbacks and several rescue normal males

0.1 columbian boa, she's a feeding monster, controls my
over production of rats, lol
0.1 brazilian rainbow boa, another rat eating monster
1.1 corns

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

Having a good job and a good credit rating certainly is one way to get the hets or morphs you want to start with. Saving money helps to. Cutting out unnecessary expensives makes it easier to save money too for the snakes you want to get. Buying lower cost morphs and breeding them, then using the money in selling the babies or trading them, to get the hets/morphs you really want to work with, helps to.

Myself I started with a normal female ball python, figuring it takes longer to get a female up to good breeding weight/age than a male. I didn't power feed her at all, just feed appropriate sized rats on a weekly basis. With a good job I was able to purchase two more normal females and a pastal male. Now I am ready to start breeding the first female, and hopefully get a couple pastals from her first clutch and get some het pieds (a pied is what I really want as a pet and to breed) or a pied male. Then in a few years I will have the makes for a pastal pied and possibly super pastals. Not sure where I will go from there but I have a few ideals in mind.
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PHLdyPayne

A) You have a high disposable income or you have a lower monthly disposable income that you are willing to send each month to a breeder who will allow payment plans so you can get the morph you want.

B) You use a credit card (very not recommended in my books), again you should then be planning to use your disposable income to pay it off each month.

C) You bought a pair of heterozygous animals that where within your budget and produced the morph you wanted sold the extras you didn't need and then bought the next one you wanted. This is what most people try to do.
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Nita Hamilton
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Ball Pythons
ballpythonworld.com

I have waited a few years for the prices of Pastels to come down to a reasonable-for-me amount. I chose a nice male '05 Graziani line for $500; this took me two months to save up from my bonus checks at work and selling off some collectibles I didn't want.
But for the higher dollar morphs, it is either, you have a ton of money to drop, or you work hard, sacrifice, trade-up if needed, and finally get what you want; kinda like anything high-priced, such as muscle cars or nice clothes, but the difference here is, you can work your way to other morphs by starting with, say, hets or lower-priced Pastels (this is what I am doing!)
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1.3 normal BPs
1.0 Pastel BP (Graziani, from the Sutherlands)
1.0 Boa Constrictor Imperator
0.1 albino Cranwell's horned frog
1.1 breeding Clawed frogs
1.0 black cat
0.2 paint mares, 1.1 paint foals
Also have fancy goldfish, african cichlids, and rats.

THEY MAKE MORE MONEY THAN I DO!!!!!!!!

I can afford the morphs I have. I drive a Daewoo! Not a bentley! I know why they can afford that and I drive a crap car.........why ask.

and snakes are funner than a piece of paper. blow your money and be happy!!!!
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GOOSEBALLS

lamina1982@hotmail.com