Reptile & Amphibian Forums

First time breeding, but I don't want to start off with normals! I'm looking to buy 2 or 3 pairs, and can't spend more than around $450 per snake. I'd like to produce some cool morphs for my first time, any suggestions on what to get? Also, I was going to get 1 female for each male, is this necessary? (or should I breed multiple females to one male) Any help will be appreciated!

You can breed multiple females to one male, and get a little more bang for your buck. If you shop around, you can find morphs like pastels, cinnies, black pastels, spiders, and occasionally even pinstripes and lessers in that price range. However, you can spend some extra money on one nice combo male (say a bumble bee) and then get a pastel female and a spider female. Then you can produce potentially 6 or so different morphs (I think my math is right) with 3 snakes rather than producing less than that with more snakes.

Thanks Jason! What would a bumblebeeXpastel produce? How about bumblebeeXspider?

Let me see if I can get this straight (combos confuse me sometimes)

Bumblebee x pastel could get you
Normals
pastels
super pastels
spiders
bumble bees
killer bees

bumblebee x spider could get you
Normals
pastels
spiders
bumble bees (If anyone else is reading this, and I'm wrong, please tell me)

There are quite a few co dom morphs out there now available in the price range you're looking at. Shop around at shows/classifieds/breeder web sites and you can probably start a fairly decent collection with what you are able to afford.

I personally wouldn't breed a bumble bee to a spider, because a double dose of spider is lethal. Get a pinstripe female instead. Or whatever you want. But I wouldn't breed spider to spider.

Scott

I agree! I would get a Bumblebee Male with a Pastel female and a Pinstripe female. You can produce alot of morphs with these three ball pythons. You can pick up these three snakes for around $1500.00! Good Luck with what ever you get. Bob

np

20 years after the founding spider was sold a homozygous spider is also not publicly proven viable.

Hard to say which side the burden of proof should be on. I'm of the opinion you should at least consider the possibility that everything is lethal and/or can't reproduce until proven otherwise. A homozygous lethal morph might be very hard to prove.

With woma it wasn't so hard because the pearls looked so different it seems clear that they are the homozygous animals even though they don't live long enough to breed and actually prove they are homozygous womas.

With spiders we don't know if the homozygous spiders just die early in the egg development or incubation process or if they are fine and look just like regular spiders but not enough have yet been produced and bred to prove one homozygous.

No spider to spider is not a lethal gene
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Damian Macioce
www.strongholdreptiles.com

Very good point, I hadn't thought of that.

Thanks guys! I think I'm going to go w/ a Bumblebee male to a Pastel female as well as a Pinstripe female. To breed this coming season, would you suggest an '08 male w/ '07 females?

A well fed 08 male should breed this upcoming season, and well fed 07 females could potentially breed this season, however, you're probably going to be looking at a bit of a higher price tag on 07 females.