Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi all I would like to get started in balls but I have little money. How can I do this? And can someone better explain the whole sexing thing because there is no herp vet around here so I must learn how to do that. thanks for any help

josh

What is it you're trying to do?? Are you interested in the "Ball python game" or are just trying to get an awesome pet?? If you're trying to get into morphs, I always tell people I talk to that don't have much money to buy a male het for whichever morph you REALLY like and stock up on as many females you can afford (most of the time 1 normal female will be more expensive than the male het).. It's a long process, but you're guaranteed to produce the visual animal you like.. But the male het and try to get at least 5 female hets, grow them up, breed them.. Take all of the female offspring, grow them up to breeding size and breed them to the father.. By the time they're ready, the male will be a good size and should be able to breed 10 .. If you're very lucky, you should have around 10 female offspring out of the 5 HetXNormal breedings.. Your odds of producing the visual hets are OUTSTANDING!!! And then you'll know which females are proven hets, if you get a homozygous male, grow him up an breed him to the proven hets, 1/2 of those clutches (should) be the homozygous animals.. This is a very long process, but it WILL work.. You can also use all of the females that didn't prove het on male co dom morphs to produce visual animals in the first pairing.. I'll give you a litte run down on genetics...

Het=Heterozygous=Wild type gene carrier
When a het is bred to a normal animal, 50% of the clutch recieve the gene.. In simple recessive morphs, the hets aren't identifiable, they look like normals, but carry the gene..

Homozygous=Morph phenotype, different from the wild type animal.
When a Homozygous animal is bred to a normal, 100% of the clutch will recieve the gene, but they will only be hets.

When you breed a Heterozygous animal to a Heterozygous animal the litter is broken down into 25% being normals not carrying the gene, 50% of the litter being hets, but still look normal, and 25% of the clutch will be homozygous, displaying the desired trait.

When you breed a homozygous animal to a homozygous animal, 100% of the litter will be homozygous, displaying the desired traits.

And then you have co dominate and dominate traits, the co dominant animal would be a het to the dominant (super) form..

The genetics work EXACTLY the same, but the hets are visable..

I'll give you a small example of different simple recessive and co dominate traits..

Simple Recessive: Albino, Axanthic, Clown, Ghost (hypo), Genetic stripe, T Positive Caramel Albino, Pied, etc.

Dominate: Pastel, Yellow Belly, Mojave, Lesser Platinum, Black Pastel, Cinnamon, etc. All of these animals have a super form.

Incomplete Dominate?: Spider, Pinstripe, etc... To my understanding, these animals haven't created a super form..

Well, that's all I can think of, someone please correct me if I got anything wrong, I tried..
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Joe Lydon

I typed too fast, and didn't proof read... When I said to buy 5 females, I meant 5 NORMAL females, not 5 Hets, that would cost a ton... Yeah, and I guess I used the wrong terms too, Codominate and Dominate should just be Codominant and Dominant... I think that's about it, shows how much I had to drink..
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Joe Lydon

Not to start a huge discussion or anything... but you are better off to just buy the morph if thats your goal than try to raise all those babies. After caging, feeding, this and that... if you dont really want to be trying to sell snakes and what not (and selling a bunch of poss hets is not easy) dont buy just a het male.

Het males are more for the people who can use the female offspring even if they arnt het. You spend that much money to raise them up and you will not make any.

Save the time and buy the morph... or wait 3 years and buy the morph... you will still come out a few years ahead and many dollars in your pocket.

Ben

By saying he has "little money", and if his intentions are to breed, you can't go wrong with what I said.. Of course if he's just looking for a morph pet, he should just buy whichever he wants, in the long run, the cost of the morph and it's cage will be cheaper than breeding.. BUT, he's got to come up with the money immediately, which might be hard to do. So how much does it really cost to house and feed 25 ball pythons?? I've got plenty of them and it costs next to nothing. At first he'll need to build a rack to house the 6 juviniles, 1 male het and 5 females... Racks can be built for CHEAP if you follow the easy directions on plenty of websites... Now he has to feed them, if he's not in a huge rush, that won't cost much. Now fast forward to the time they're grown up, time for BREEDING!! Eggs are dropped, he can build an incubator or buy some hova's cheap.. Eggs hatch out, sell or trade the males to petshops for a credit on feeders, pick out the girls and he's 2 yrs away from producing a good number of homozygous animals. Now that he'll have some profit from his adventure, he'll have all of the experience he needs as well.. Of course he could buy a homozygous animal 3yrs from now after saving, but what's he going to learn from that? Oh well, I must be wrong..
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Joe Lydon

I think what joe says makes sense if I buy the morphs and screw up the eggs I am out alot more than if I screwed up possie het eggs. So it is like practice makes perfect.And it is an emergency that I get a snake now lol I have always wanted one now I feel like I would die without one.

I've gotten burned on so many het females, I couldn't imagine if I was breeding male "hets" to normals. What if it's not a het? You're breeding normals for six years thinking you are heading toward something.....?

I say, raise five normal females, and in a year get a visual male anything. At least you know what you're making.

Depends why you want to get into balls. If you just want a couple pets that you can breed and sell the offspring, or to produce the expensive morphs, will depend on what direction you can go. The detailed suggestions given by a previous poster buying het males and normal females is a good thing to follow.

If you just want to get one or two snakes but can't afford to get any hets, I suggest buying a couple normal females. (even just one works) enjoy her for a year or two and while you are doing that get a good parttime or fulltime job, save money and buy a pastal male. When the pastal male is 2 years old and over 1000g, your female is most likely in her third winter and well over 1500g. Breed them together. Keep female offspring and breed super pastels, sell the male pastels and normal pastel siblings.

As for sexing, I suggest buying the dvd or video available to sex ball pythons, or I do beleive I have read here there is a video available. Sorry,no clue what site to go to order it. Hatchling and young balls can be 'popped' but as damage can happen to the hemepenis if done incorrectly, it is best to find somebody to help, either a fellow snake owner or breeder.