Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I want to get at least one albino for my personal collection, but cant really afford to drop $2500-3000 on one. I was looking on the classifieds and have seen 100% het pairs go for between $600-900, that are a year old or more. Would this be a good alternative to eventually get myself an albino? I'm sure someone has experience about it

Thanks

Neal

Neal, if you aren't in a hurry to get your albino then it is the way to go. I'm speculating doin' this myself. I don't remember the breakdown...albino, het,norm.......per clutch, but you will wind up with an albino this way, it's just the long way to go about it.

I'm not sure about a year or more old for $900. If they say '04 then it was probably produced somewhere in July so it's quite far from being a year old. I sell 100% het albinos (none left) and for those who cannot afford a homo animal, it's really the only way to go. It will get you albinos but will take a little longer. Just be very careful when purchasing and research the seller.
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Jay A. Martin

Well, even if they are '04, by the time I will end up buying them, they will most likely be a year or almost. (I want to wait until spring, as its pretty cold here in Missouri right now). I'm not in a huge hurry...if it took a couple of years, that is ok with me. Maybe I will get lucky and get two in one clutch and I can sell one.

Can you recommend some reputable sellers that offer good prices on 100% het pairs? Also, when they sell a pair, I wouldnt think they would sell a pair that was directly related, would they? As in out of the same clutch?

Neal

But what I'm getting at is price is relative. An '04 purchased 6 months from now will likely be more expensive because it has grown. Also, a 700 gram '04 is worth more than a 200 gram '04. When July/August rolls around, there will be plenty of '05 animals. You should be able to get a good deal.

There are plenty of reputable breeders - (I'll have plenty animals), Scott Michaels, Bill Shanahan, Ken Foster, etc. Some sell pairs from the same clutch while others sell unrelated pairs. You just have to ask.
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Jay A. Martin

Breeding to HETS together will not gurantee an albino. The odds are in your court but it still involves luck.

In 2004 I bred 100% HETS together received 6 beautiful healthy LARGE babies all eggs hatched and there were NO albinos. In fact the 100% HET mother was also bred to an ALBINO MALE before breeding the 100% HET male, and still there were no albinos.

The snakes that were bred were purchased from TOP OF THE LINE breeders, people I am sure who are 100% honest, people with the BIGGEST names in the industry. People I trust, and people I talked to (ONE IN PERSON) after my disappointment.

I also bred a 100% HET female to a male ALBINO, now supposed to have a 50% chance to get ALBINOS, again six LARGE eggs, 6 eggs are hatched really BIG 85 gram + babies.

Again NO ALBINOS. The mother was BRED to a single male albino aprox 6-8 times. So the father snake was not in question. I had 2 conversations with the breeder of my MOTHER snake, and she was shocked.

She swore that the snake was a 100% HET and that people who purchased other females from that same clutch had reported back to her about producing albinos.

I beleive her word, if you can't trust VPI or Bob Clark (thats were my 100% HETS came from as BABIES) then who can you trust.

I beleive they were 100% HETS, I beleive I had some VERY VERY BAD luck.

Atleast I did hatch a group 2.4 group of healthy 100% HETS and another group of 2.4 66% HETS that may be 100% HETS since the first breeder male was my albino.

Don't count on producing albinos from a HET X HET breeding or even at ALBINO X HET breeding. Yes the odds are in your favor, but it is not a gurantee.

Call me a quiter, but I did quit ball pythons after this summer. I did not get over the fact of not having 1 single albino, which is ALL I wanted. I had it set in my mind that I was going to get atleast 1 ALBINO, 1 would have made me happy.

3+ years to raise my females to breeding size (2000, 2200 grams).

4 months to incubate the eggs, 4 months of HELL as I was so nervous about it because I never did it before in my life.

Years and years of HARD work maintaing a very LARGE rat breeding colony.

Coming home from work, to clean rats or feed snakes to 5AM in the morning.

And then the day comes and you get NOTHING. It was enough to make me quit and I did, I sold my entire collection including the babies (aprox 70 snakes) at $22,000 loss, just to get out.

What I am saying is don't expect albinos unless your breeding albino x albino, don't set yourself up for a MAJOR disappointment.

The odds are you will get atleast 1 albino but there is chance you will not.

Sorry to hear your bad luck. You are correct. It's a chance. But the odds are pretty accurate. I've only heard of just a few out of thousands of instances where this happens. A couple of times it was concluded that the person DID NOT have a true het. I won't say anything about your situation, but I have had a less than positive experience from one of the big 5 breeders. In fact, it was my first bad experience in this hobby. It sounds like you don't really have a 100% het or you have really bad luck. Just for the sake of honor, why not keep trying. It would be interesting to know. Who knows, maybe a mistake was made. It happens.
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Jay A. Martin

Yeah, it seems like most good breeders will back up there hets and buy them back if you are not able to produce albinos after two clutches. I would definitely try to get my money back if that happened to me.

Just wanted to throw out a good luck story. I bred my pair of 100% hets last year for the first time. It was my first time breeding any of my Ball Pythons and I got 5 big healthy eggs and hatched out 2 albinos from them. Needless to say I was thrilled!!!!

thanks!!! where did you get your hets at???

I got them from a buddy and I'm not really sure where his originated from. Sorry not much help....

Jason

Breeding hets is fine if you have the time to wait and raise them. You are looking at 2-3 years on a female and 1 year on your male. If I was going the Het route I would breed the male 100% het to a few normal females the first year to get poss het females the first year while your female 100% het is becoming of age and size. Then you will have more females in the long run. Nothing wrong with HETs as long as you want to wait up to 3 years to produce the visual in your case an ALBINO. Thanks DAVID

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1.0 Pied(04)(RDR)
1.0 Albino(04)(RDR)
0.1 Spider(04)(RDR)
3.2 Pastels(03's)(04's)(ASF,Graziani,Bell lines)
0.1 Yellow belly(unproven)(04)
1.3 Yellow belly(unproven)(02,03,04's)
2.0 100% HET CLOWN(04's)(MHMR)
3.3 100% het albinos(03's)(high contrast bell line)
0.1 poss Het Albino(03's)
2.0 100% het pieds(03's)(Vin Russo,CRE)
0.2 100% het pieds(03's)(04's)(RDR,TWL)
1.2 Poss het pieds(03's)(PETE KAHL)
2.1 Poss het pieds(00's)(01's) hoping to get PIEDS this year(Vin Russo, Pete Kahl)
25 Normal adult females
60 04 females
15 normal mixed 03's
20 Assorted weird ball pythons 04's

What would the point of breeding the 100% het male to a normal female be? Just to have some extra possible het snakes to sell or something?

I was told there is a 25% chance when breeding a 100% het to another, I do realize there is a chance I get NONE, but out of 6-8 eggs, thats a chance I am willing to take.

If anyone will have some 100% het pairs in the next few months they will guarantee to be just that, I would be very interested in doing business with you.

Neal

Yes, That is one reason to get More of your own HETs, If you Breed a 100% het to a NORMAL, Half the babies will be 100% HET also, The problem is you won't know which ones that is why I would keep all the FEMALEs to breed back to either the original 100% het or a Albino when you produce one. The SECOND reason for breeding the Original 100% het MALE is to get practice of hatching eggs and and making sure he knows what is UP when the 100% het female becomes READY. Hope this helps. Thanks DAVID
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1.0 Pied(04)(RDR)
1.0 Albino(04)(RDR)
0.1 Spider(04)(RDR)
3.2 Pastels(03's)(04's)(ASF,Graziani,Bell lines)
0.1 Yellow belly(unproven)(04)
1.3 Yellow belly(unproven)(02,03,04's)
2.0 100% HET CLOWN(04's)(MHMR)
3.3 100% het albinos(03's)(high contrast bell line)
0.1 poss Het Albino(03's)
2.0 100% het pieds(03's)(Vin Russo,CRE)
0.2 100% het pieds(03's)(04's)(RDR,TWL)
1.2 Poss het pieds(03's)(PETE KAHL)
2.1 Poss het pieds(00's)(01's) hoping to get PIEDS this year(Vin Russo, Pete Kahl)
25 Normal adult females
60 04 females
15 normal mixed 03's
20 Assorted weird ball pythons 04's

With all this talk of breeding and breeding the offspring of a 100% het to a normal and rebreeding those offspring, I was wondering if its "bad" to do that...I mean for humans, dogs, etc...you really dont want to breed around the gene pool too much. Are snakes different?

YES, In my opinion snakes are different. This type of breeding has been done for years. Now I wouldn't keep breeding back but One generation won't hurt. The way I see it is that snakes in the wild interbreed all the time somewhere down the line. I have collected snake in the same spots for 10-15 years and still get the same numbers if Not more than the year before. Now they have to be breeding with the offspring somewhere along the line. I do not believe snakes would know that they are breeding a brother, sister , mother, father, cousins, etc. Now I'm sure if you kept doing this you MIGHT come up with some problems. But I know that it is done all the time in the snake business, that is how most recessive Morphs have been discovered to be genetic. Thanks DAVID
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1.0 Pied(04)(RDR)
1.0 Albino(04)(RDR)
0.1 Spider(04)(RDR)
3.2 Pastels(03's)(04's)(ASF,Graziani,Bell lines)
0.1 Yellow belly(unproven)(04)
1.3 Yellow belly(unproven)(02,03,04's)
2.0 100% HET CLOWN(04's)(MHMR)
3.3 100% het albinos(03's)(high contrast bell line)
0.1 poss Het Albino(03's)
2.0 100% het pieds(03's)(Vin Russo,CRE)
0.2 100% het pieds(03's)(04's)(RDR,TWL)
1.2 Poss het pieds(03's)(PETE KAHL)
2.1 Poss het pieds(00's)(01's) hoping to get PIEDS this year(Vin Russo, Pete Kahl)
25 Normal adult females
60 04 females
15 normal mixed 03's
20 Assorted weird ball pythons 04's

While you might get away with interbreeding for some individuals, continuing this practice tends to concentrate recessive genes. In the case of Albinos this is what you want...however, if your snakes happen to have other recessive mutant genes, you will also be concentrating these. So you run the risk of other genetic problems showing up. This is the same reason why human interbreeding is a no no and why some people in certain nameless areas of the country seem semi retarded.

Snakes are no different, you will run the risk of generating a population of snakes with genetic problems if you constantly interbreed. Anecdotal evidence to the contrary (i.e. I've never had any problems with my twenty snakes) is just that...and no different than in humans (i.e. Me and my's sister had chitlins and yee haw!! they all turned out jussst fine!).

If you want a healthy collection of snakes and are not trying to just make a bunch of money, then you should consider keeping the gene pool as diverse as possible, or you run the risk of creating other problems down the line. Like dog breeds that go insane or cat breeds that can't shi t like someone posted on here a couple of days ago.

Good luck

You've gotten a bunch of good information but I thought I'd throw my 2 cents in, just because I'm having a slow morning.

If you pick up a pair of hets now it'll be about two years before you'll be able to breed the female. Now as it's been pointed out the gene for albino is recessive so there is a very good chance it may take a clutch or two before you get an albino. Or you may luck out and get one on the first shot, you really can't tell.

At the very least you've spent $900 on a pair of snakes, $500 feeding them for two years, Another $300 or so for two years worth of miscellanity (caging, substrate, heat, incuabtor, time and engergy, etc.). You're well on your way to an albino at those prices. Of course if you love snakes, and have the patience, the hets will be good companion snakes for the wait.

By the way I picked up one of Jays het albinos to breed to my albino next year (fingers crossed) she is absolutely wonderful, very beautiful, well cared for, and she's got a great disposition. Thanks Jay!

As always - just my opinion.
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Tosha

3.7.0 Ball Python (Harry and Fluffy and currently un-named)
0.1.0 Siberian Husky (Kita)
0.2.0 Feline (Pippen and Pandora)
0.0.1 Dessert Tortoise (Pope)
5.4.2 Fish (1,2,3,4...)
0.0.1 Frog rescued from pool skimmer
0.0.2 Lizards rescued from pool skimmer

Yes, but those costs will be spread out over 2 years and not all upfont. I cant justify throwing down 3grand, but i can do 600-900 and pay for food etc over a 2 year period...then have the potential to get multiple and sell one, or keep one and breed it eventually

Then I guess you've answered your question.

Another practical alternative would be to buy a normal male ($40) raise him for two years and stick $20/week in a jar for your albino - much less hastle and your guaranteed an albino in the end.

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Tosha

3.7.0 Ball Python (Harry and Fluffy and currently un-named)
0.1.0 Siberian Husky (Kita)
0.2.0 Feline (Pippen and Pandora)
0.0.1 Dessert Tortoise (Pope)
5.4.2 Fish (1,2,3,4...)
0.0.1 Frog rescued from pool skimmer
0.0.2 Lizards rescued from pool skimmer

Tasha,

That's really a good alternative. Less animals to feed. Less breeding worries. Same end result. Good call. =)

Chris =)
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"You ever heard of those? They're called parents. We have parents who love us. You don't 'cause you're a little orphan." -- Roy O'Bannon

She should be quite large by then and produce several healthy eggs. With some luck you can get several albinos. I vaguely remember someone posting a success story where hey had a clutch of 6 eggs and 5 were albinos! That sure would be nice.
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Jay A. Martin

The no brainer is it's more within your budget. But just as important if not more is how fun the process would be to produce your own albino.

You will freak when your first Albino hatches. Of course with Het X Het you will only have a 25% chance.....but if you hit you will be dancing.......

Buying one would be cool....but producing one is just different. Let me tell you......I have a hard time selling them, I want to keep them all!

I plan to produce a good number of 100% het pieds this year....but I will also have a shot at visual pieds. I can't wait to see a Pied come out of an egg. Many people will get phone calls!

Have fun
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Jim Perron
Python Passion Reptiles
pythonpassion@hotmail.com
www.pythonpassionreptiles.com

See to me that's just not the right thing to do. If you just want an albino for your collection save and buy one. Yes it's nice to go through the whole breeding thing, if you want to be a breeder. To do it just to get one animal (and maybe a little extra cash) is (IMO) stupid. Why encourage a bunch of people to take the cheap route? Breeding is not all that simple, it takes time and dedication, hatching is not that simple. And flooding the market with a bunch of cheap 66%ers is not going to help the industry. There are lots ways things get screwed up along the way and it's the animals that are going to take the fall as well as the industry. And Neal, in another year or two you should be able to pick up an albino for about $1000, I'd be surprise if by the end of the year you don't see a few desperate people selling them for $1500.

I'll step off my soap box now, it just irks me when ya'll forget these are living creatures.
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Tosha

3.7.0 Ball Python (Harry and Fluffy and currently un-named)
0.1.0 Siberian Husky (Kita)
0.2.0 Feline (Pippen and Pandora)
0.0.1 Dessert Tortoise (Pope)
7.9.5 Fish (1,2,3,4...)
0.0.1 Frog rescued from pool skimmer
0.0.2 Lizards rescued from pool skimmer

I would like to start breeding though, and I would like to start my journey by getting an albino. I would probably have a hard time saving up $2000 anyways, because by the time I got that much money at one time, I would start thinking about spending it on other goodies.

Anyone buy from top shelf reptiles? they have a 100% het albino pair for $650 shipped.

Go to my website and checkout Buying Tips section.
Buying Tips

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Jay A. Martin

I bought three captive born hatchling females from them.
They might be normals,but they are flawless.
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Charles Glaspie

What i should have said...

They are only normal cbb females,but they are flawless.
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Charles Glaspie

neal, you sure got a lot of response from that post !!! as a matter of fact i have heard of top shelf - acutally i bought 3 100% het albinos females from them this year - they have a good rating on fauna. i know you have gotten a lot of feedback so i will give you my piece. i do a lot with 100% females and actual morph males - albinos and pieds mostly. it just seems the biggest bang for your buck. you could pick up 1,2,3 100% het females right now. start saving your money and in a year or so - when the prices of albinos are down you can purchase male. by then you should have one more year to grow them all and they will be ready to breed. you would have put in 500,1000,1500 into hets right now, 1500 into a male in a year - save up as you go - then when you breed them you could """ possibly """" have 2,4,6 albinos in the end. like i said, just my thoughts.

I recently bought a male 100% het for albino for $190 shipped from Garrick DeMeyer at www.crestedgecko.com. He is one of the best in the business IMO. The size of your collection and how many animals you have for sale doesn't make you the best (again IMHO) but he's one of the nicest and honest breeders I've seen. Check the BOI on the...other site..and see what comes up. He still has some 04 male 100% het for albinos left for $190 shipped, but he's all sold out of females. He promised me that this summer he'd sell me a 50% possible het for albino male and a female 100% het albino for like $675 shipped. Otherwise it's $600 for a female het. Being as young as I am, and not even having a real job, somehow I still manage to keep Ball Pythons. (I get overpayed to baby-sit a 7 year old can't exactly call it a "job" though) I plan to buy lots of adult balls this summer, and breed them during winter. I want to start off my first breed with an clutch of at least 1 albino. It's a shot worth taking.

Also, what part of Missouri do you live in? I'm in Kansas City.

Hope it helped,

Ryan

http://market.kingsnake.com/detail.php?cat=32&de=286775

I am in Kansas City too

Wow! Great responses guys (and girls) I got a lot of great information, and I think I am definately going to go the breeding route. I just dont have $2000-3000 upfront to spend on a snake, and overall, I think breeding is the best way to go in my case. Id be interested in breeding other morphs in the future, and I think this will be a good way to get my feet wet.

Neal