Reptile & Amphibian Forums

What is the cheapest way to start a Caramel breeding project?

You can always start of with a 50% possible het male but I wouldn't recommend that.

This is what I did. First purchase a het male. Breed him to normal females. Hold back the daughers (50% possible hets). Grow them up. Then 1 year before they are breedable pick-up either another het male as to avoid in-breeding, or an actual caramel male (the course I took).

Year 3 breed your male to the holdback females and you should prove some out as hets and in doing so produce Caramels.

Hope this helps.

Markus
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www.ballpython.ca

Great advice Markus ..exactly the way we went and hopefully we'll prove some out this year or next !!!!

Bill/Jake Shanahan
JLSnakes@aol.com

mj
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www.ballpython.ca

You can get a couple of poss het caramel males. Breed them to normal females and keep all the female offspring. Breed the fathers back to their offsprings and pray LOL. This way takes the longest.

The next cheapest way....Get a het male.... breed him to normal females......keep all the female offspring.....breed them back to the original het male..... this way also takes long.

Next best is buy a het male and a couple of 50% poss het females and hope that luck is on your side.

You can also get het male and het female....again hope the odds are with you cause people have bred het to het an missed on visuals. The more het females you get the better.

Hope this helps

Raul

Caramel ball pythons have a genetic defect of producing spinal kinks. FYI

but what i do on my resc. projects is buy 100% het females, grow them for a couple of years then buy a male morph. by the time the females are at breeding size the males have come down in price. like i said, this is not the cheapest but it is a quicker way to get the visual morph without waiting 3,4,5 years. IMO

Thats the route I believe in, starting with 100% het females and then adding a visible morph male when the females are big enough to breed.. of course you also purchase 66% het females as long as you buy several of them that increases your breeding chances and they are a lot cheaper than 100% hets. Worst case if the 66% hets don't prove out when bred with the visible morph at least you know the babies are 100% het.

Good Luck, John
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John Berry Reptiles

www.johnberryreptiles.com