Reptile & Amphibian Forums

The demand for Dominant and Co-dominant mutation seems to be very high right now. I would think within the next five years or so, the Dom and Co-Doms will drastically drop in value. No one can argue supply will outweigh demand.

As a long term investment, would it not be wiser to invest in recessive mutations and then cross the Dominant and Co-Dominant morphs down the road.

I realize the return on investment is quicker with Dom/Co-dom and they in turn can be crossed to the recessives (The opposite can also be applied) but wanted to get opinions before investing.

Please advise...

Thanks

Val

I think quality simple recessives will hold their value for a long time. I'm starting to see a lot of cut-throat competition going on with the co-doms, like the pastels (supers are another story though). I'm starting my investments with some nice simple recessive homozygous animals with matching hets, and a ton of 03/04 cb normal females. I'll probably get just a few co-doms to mix up with. This is just my opinion at least.

Think about it....people go out buy a male and have morphs. With Recessive you have to either get a pair of hets or the morph and a het or breed a morph into normals to get hets and so on. In the long run these co-dom morphs will drop in price while the recessive morphs keep their price more so! Anyways just thought I'd let ya know my 2cent,

John

The answer is everything!

Just joking a bit........buy seriously, I think the answer is diversification. If you toss all your eggs (literally) in one basket....you could come out on the short end of the stick.

Co-Doms/Doms are popular because the return on investment happens in the first generation. However, as you indicated, their value will drop much more rapidly then Recessives.

If it was me and I had 18K to spend and that was all I had. I would not spend it on one hot codom. I would get several solid snake mutations that down the road I could cross for new combinations. More morphs in your bag of tricks opens new options for your breeding group. When you stop and think about it, you can generate a long list of combos that have not yet been proven.

I like the idea of some recessive and some codom/Dom in my collection and then begin crossing them. Then you get pastels het for whatever, spider hets, mojave hets.....etc in the first generation. What will sustain the value of codom/dom is combining them with recessive animals.

Also, get a codom/Dom that is extremely diverse. The pastel is an excellent choice. Everything can go through this codom and get brighter with more blushing.....an then there is another level still with the super. spiders are on fire....but I still see the greatest long term investment being the pastel. Spiders to my knowledge do not! have a super.....they are dominent. Yes yes yes.....I do realize the verdict is out on this a still. However, there has been many spider X spider breedings........and I have seen zero supers. If someone has a super spider please post it.

A pastel male is an automatic...make sure you have an army of adult females to go with him. I think this with one nice codom line makes for a deadly combo. If you can afford more of both...then get them.

Jim Perron
Python Passion

I have begun with a pastel male and a hypo male. Cheapest morphs out there, lol. BUT the beauty is that I can get a fast return on pastel babies and then use that return to buy other more expensive morphs to cross into my projects. (As well as to fund an Angolan project some day, I hope!)

But I agree that with say 18k to spend the best thing would be to get two solid, well-liked morphs, say for example pied and axanthic, then work on being one of the first to cross them. Of course a dominant/codom project would also be a good investment with the added bonus of selling off those f1 codoms or hets that you don't need to get to your goal of codom x dom.

As a ball python lover who has never bred my animals before, I feel like we are just getting started. I don't think the market is at it's peak yet. How can it be with all the so far unseen crosses out there? What about the triple homo animals?? Yeah, in a clutch of four that's like winning the lottery, but some people are extremely lucky. . . hatching season is so exciting!

My last advice would be just get what you like. Get animals that when you breed them the babies will be what you really want to see. . . then your work will be extra rewarding.