Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello everyone I have finally decided to take the plunge as a breeder, as a ball python fanatic I now have a few in my collection .The Qusetion is since these beautiful animals are so expensive is it better to start with 100% het and breed them together or start with morphs, I think it would be better to start with 100% het since this would be a great deal less expensive and I would get the chance to learn and see what breeding is all about, all of your opinions are welcome?

It depends on the amount of money you have to spend and how much time you have to dedicate to breeding. If you had, say, $7000. You could buy one Caramel Albino and a couple of normals. Get hets from the breeding. Breed them and get Caramels, Hets, and normals. 4 year minimum involvement. Or you could get 14 Pastels at roughly $500 a piece. Breed them and get Pastels, Super Pastels, and normals. Sell the babies and buy more expensive morphs. Or any number of combos, Albino/Spiders, Hypo/clowns...

But, the thing to consider, statistics/genetics are not facts. They are only potential. Breeding Hets. could produce normal looking babies for years before you see a morph.

If you get lucky, Hets are the cheapest way to get in though.
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That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.

I've purchased visuals as well as hets, a few things to consider ;

100% Hets;

When time to sell, you get virtually nothing for possible het males (we usually hold onto to possy het females) and are often times sold of wholesale.

You need to be carefull where you buy hets from (lots of low life dogs out there!)

I've found it more rewarding to produce my own visual then to go out and buy one

More economical with same end result.

Visuals;

Return on investment is much faster

Always a market for 100% Hets, even males!

Can be crossed right away with other recessives or Dom, Co-Dom morphs.

When bred back to 100% Hets, you get statisticaly half of the clutch being visuals.

So, I have breedable Het Axanthics, breedable Het Green Ghosts, breedable Het Pieds, an Albino and two Het females, a Ghost and a Het female and 3 Possible Het females...

I have only produced one Axanthic, from the above group, and it died in the egg. So, my point is, with Simple Recessive genes, buy multiple animals, multiple males, multiple females. If I was starting now, I would pick two simple recessive morphs, one I really liked, and one that made a great cross with the one I really liked. I would then buy a few het females, maybe a few possible het females, and a gorgeous homozygous male, and a het male. If you are going to produce simple recessives, you need at a minimum, multiple females. A homozygous male and het male just make getting eggs a better bet, than if you have only one male.

My problem: My male Het pied ate awesome, my female was a very very slow starter, almost to the point where I thought I was going to lose her. My het green ghosts, my male ate like a horse, my female was iffy at best. I got one big clutch from them, when my incubation technique was not really all that good, and all the eggs molded. My original male Albino was a mouse eater and only sometimes. I thought eventually he probably need a change of scenery, and I was right, sold him as a problem feeder, and he ate 4 mice per meal at the new guys house. My Het Albino females were not much better, but at least ate rats. My new male Albino is a stud eater, hopefully they will produce this year, only one female was ready to go, one female has not been ready for 4 years straight now,not big enough, did not eat well enough through out the year. My Ghost male was bred to my Ember female in 05, and produced the Ember Het Hypo babies, finally. My Het Hypo female was a poor eater, the possible het Hypos are great eaters, hope to get some babies from them this year. Bottom line, do not count on one pair to produce, buy multiple male and female animals for a simple recessive project. My Co Dom projects have done much better.

Dave

First off I’d like to say I’m new to breeding but my opinion is if you have adult females I’d buy a visual male. If you get a good sized male you only have to wait a few months and you're ready to breed and you'll get your hets. With hets if you buy a young pair you need to wait for the female to gain size and the breeding might not produce the visible morph. All the normals would be possible hets and the genetics would be questionable. I'd rather spend more and be sure with the outcomes it would be a better investment for future projects in my opinion to go the visible route.

I am also new to breeding, but 2 things that I have learned is:
1) Don't put ALL your hope (or money) into one animal. I got 3 co-dom males and spent the rest of my money on proven breeder females. I'm glad I got more than one male because I now think one male will probably not breed this year, one probably will and the other is proven.
2) If you plan to start hanging on to poss hets, then you have that many more animals to take care of. I use to think I would buy 3-4 100% het males and wait the 2-3 years to breed the females back to dad. I would have been holding on to more than I was willing to keep and then it could possibly not proven out in the end.

In the end I hope to be able to buy more visual recessives from the sales of co-doms. Also I get to have some fun along the way by hatching out some visuals instead of normal looking ball pythons.
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Steve Smith
Midwest Reptiles
www.mwreptiles.com