I've been working with ball pythons for about 4 years now... I have a decent collection that I've been able to assemble primarily though trades for green tree pythons, which are the main species I've worked with since 1998. At the end of last year, I made the decision to "invest" (I hate that word as it relates to snakes, but I guess that's what I did) some money in ball pythons.
After much research, I narrowed it down to deciding between 2 morphs... banana and ultramel. These were the two higher-end morphs that really appealed to me. I was looking at a nice group of ultras or 2 female bananas for about the same money. Ultimately, the relative instability of the co-dom market led me to playing it safer with the recessive morph.
I picked up 1.1 Ultramels Het. Caramel and 0.3 Ultramels. I also have a pair of 2010 Dbl Het Ultra x Ghost, so I'll be able to incorporate them into the project as well.
I took a bit of a risk in that the 1.1s are from the Wagner / Crider line that's been here for a while, and the 0.3 are from a different line initially imported in 2006... I don't think these lines have been crossed yet to determine compatibility. Even if they are not compatible, it's not the end of the world as I plan to use the 0.3 to make combos with other recessives anyway.
Anyway, I got the animals a few weeks ago, and love them... really cool morph. Here are some crappy phone pics of two of them... one from each line.
The top pic is of the 2006 line and the bottom pic is the Wagner / Crider line. I do notice some subtle differences in coloration and blushing between the two groups, but nothing that looks outside what you might normally see between 2 different clutches of the same morph.
If anyone has any info on campatibility of these two lines, I'd love to hear it.
