Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Say you have a Pied project, I am just curious as to how many of us start with the Het Pied male, bred to normal females, keep the female offspring back and breed to the Het Pied male? Do the same as above, but breed back to a Pied male instead of the Het Pied. Did you start out with a few Het females, and a homozygous male? Did you start out with a Het pair? It all depends on many factors, such as space, funds, caging...

Co Doms could be set up a few different ways too. Say a Pastel project...could be male Pastel x normal females, or some may choose to buy the female Pastels first, and a Super male...

I am just curious as to what has worked for you, and what has not. For me, the Het Pair has been a failure. It seems one of the pair is a poor eater, or one year they just do not breed...

Dave

pied project started as 2 het males. I was planning on breeding both to many normal females and produce tons of poss hets. Well the desire to produce a pied increased so we bought 3 het females. We produced one clutch of poss hets last year of which we got 7 females from an 8 egg clutch (1 egg went bad). We are breeding one of the het females to a het male this year and we are hoping to get a clutch out of her (she's 1490g) and we will also be producing another clutch or 2 of poss hets. We went the het route because of the desire to want to produce our first pied. with our other projects we have gone the route of citrus ghost male and het females, pastel females then pastel male and spider male, vanilla male and vanilla female (soon to acquire), plan on yb male and yb females this year as well as lesser male and females and mojave females.
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons:::

1.0 striped vanilla
1.0 spider
1.2 Citrus Ghost and hets
1.2 Albino and hets
2.3 het Pied
0.6 50% poss het pied
1.1 Pastel (male has additional gene going on with him)
a bunch of normal female breeders
a bunch of normal female holdbacks and several rescued 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!!!!!

in late 05 i bought a het pied pair. i traded the pair off 6 months later(great deal). about a month ago i got the female back and purchased an unrelated het male from nerd. the female is currently 600 grams, the male about 200. hopefully, by next year both will breed for me. i also acquired a pair of het orange ghosts. i will probably sell the male off cheap and buy a male visual og to breed to the female in 08.

When I first started getting into breeding I bought a bunch of 1.1 hets for the recessive projects that I wanted to work with (the albino project aside we went with the homo male) and co-dom males with sub adult or adult normal females.

After spending a year raising the recessives I realized that now I have all these males that are ready to breed but I don't have any females to put with them - and not wanting to go the whole possible het route (eww who has the time and space) - I sold off most of the males and bought a bunch of visual males to pair up with the het females this season. For some of the higher end morphs where I couldn't afford a visual I am still going with the het to het pairings - but considering the time it takes to raise these up and the limited return I don't think it's worth it and I'm rather disappointed with these projects - especially considering I can buy a pair of genetic stripes today for the price I paid for the hets a couple of years ago and at the end of the season if I'm lucky I'll be in the same boat with two years worth of additional work. Anyway I am really not looking forward to trying to sell possible hets or even the hets from my homo to het projects. I guess if the money is not there then that's the way you gotta go (hets that is) but I'd rather not have to deal with them at all - unfortunately all of my favorite morphs are recessive - LOL.

As for the co-doms - I got rid of most of my co-dom projects - those that I kept are going to be used for mixes (eg: pastel het for something else) which will mostly be hold back projects. And because I dumped my co-dom projects I had so many left over adult normal females at the beginning of the season I loaned them all out to other people.

Its funny when I look back at my projected breeding plans from the previous years I realize that I've shifted direction quite a few times. I can't imagine how the big breeders with thousands of projects keep to their plan (or do they?)!

Boy I rambled didn't I.
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Tosha

I went the long route on most projects. Albino project het male and two het females will breed next season. Ghost het female and will purchase a male homo soon. Male 66% het male lavender to normals this season, Male het clown to het female in 07-08.
Most hets were purchased as a budget way to produce morphs.If I could afford it I would have purchased homo males and multiple het females with a backup het male for every project. I really have decided to focus a full rack per morph .........Things happen , It sucks to raise a male for 2 years and females for 3 years only to find that your only male for that particular morph doesnt wan to breed that year.In the future I will purchase homo males of medium expense animals like ghost , Albinos, and purchase multiple het females per rack. I would ultimately like to have two homo males and 5-6 female hets per project. For the average hobyist that cant drop $8,000- $30,000 on a single animal hets are the way I will go. So clowns , Lavenders , Pinstripes, Etc will have to be done with het to het breedings. For the total budget minded ........Buying a full clutch of poss hets to breed to your het male is the way to go preferable all females(That gene is in there you just have to find it. With a single pos het purchase your taking a gamble that you purchased the one with the gene your looking for. With a clutch purchase you have the gene you just cant see it .........But its there! Its that much more exciting when that morph is produced. It will take me 4 years to prove out that 66% lav...Breed to a normal raise babies to breeding age breed back to him and hopefully get a homo animal or Ill have lots of normal females.

My first project was a 1.1 lemon pastels and a 0.1 spider. No hets only morphs,designers and normals. My second project was albinos. Originaly it was 1 homo male a 100 het male and 2 poss. het females. But after some second thought I decided that for the time and effort I had to have a homo female to really make it work for me. My third project is a 1.1 unrelated het pieds I got from Greg Graziani. The cheap way for sure, but at the time I was not ready to flip for a homo male. Maybe by the end of the year, we'll see what prices do. My forth project is a 1.1 pair of orange ghost. Here I decide that homos where the only way to go. I want to produce honeybees and POG's and figured that a spider male 100 het for ghost to a ghost female is the fastest way to get there, at least for the honeybee. And the same thing goes for the albino project as well. I will breed a spider female to my male albino and then the following season breed a male spider 100% het to my albino female. Is any one starting to see a pattern. I personaly believe that using a homo female and a 100% het male is the quickest way to produce a visual morph.(son back to mother) It may not give you quantity, but possibly breeding a male at one year of age is better then trying to breed a het female at two years (maybe) three years of age.I also have a new project where I purchased two visual females. The male I have is a pastel that is possible het. Again I figure even If he doen't prove out all of his sons will and a lot quicker then his daughters. But thats just my plans.

Jeff

Since I really just breed for a hobby, and my main goal is just to own a few of my favorite morphs. I bought a few het males and a normal female for each of them. I sold the males as normals localy to people looking for pets, and held back all the 50% hets. When my females approach breeding size, I'll either buy a visual to breed to them if the price is low enough, or just use the hets if I don't feel like spending the money. Whatever doesn't prove out will either be sold or kept to start my next projects with co-doms. Hopefully buy this time they will be common enough that they will either be really cheap or easy to trade for.