Good Starter BP Male

I've made one step further into getting a bp, hopefully getting one in the next 5-8 months, which means I'm starting my heavy research now. I think the picture of the coral glow someone posted is what gave the final push... such a beautiful snake! The variety of morphs and combinations are almost overwhelming but I think I'm starting to get some headway.

I'd like to get a baby male, preferably one I could stud out to someone local until I build up my own collection. I really really like the lighter morphs (as well as the panda pied morph but that's out of my price range). What do you guys think are the best morphs around the $700-1200 mark that would be a good investment and give a lot of breeding options (and are a lighter color morph).

I like the blue eyed leucys and the ivory's but I think these are single gene (mojave and yellow belly respectively)? and so don't have as many possible cross outcomes? Please correct me if I'm wrong. I also like the pewter bees, killer bees, and the Jigsaws.

Just wanted to get everyone's thoughts and their personal preferences. It's slowly starting to absorb... World of Ball Pythons has been a great help too

Thanks,

Welcome to the dark side

I was talking to my buddy a while back and he brought up a good point about first time BP purchases if you are deciding to breed. He said he usually recommends a female first. I'm sure you know, but the female will need more time to get bigger than the male and a year between the two purchases helps in two ways. First the male won't grow faster than the female and if she ends up being a problem feeder, it gives you a little extra time to get her up to size if the male is a year behind. Secondly, a $1500 male this year could be $750 the next so you end up saving some money and the male wont depreciate as quickly.

Preferences for males vary sooo much. I've met some people that will only buy recessives as males and dom/codom females. I prefer the opposite although I don't really practice it much LOL. I think a double or triple dom/codom combo would be great for a male since breeder size normal females are pretty cheap and abundant, but buying a breeder size female morph can get expensive.

BEL complex can be achieved through multiple morph combos. Any combination of mojave, lesser, butter, vin russo, and maybe a couple more I'm missing, will produce a BEL. So if you get a mojaveXlesser BEL and breed him to a normal, you'll get all mojaves and lessers, no normals. Take that same BEL and breed it to a pinstripe and you'll get jigsaws, kingpins, mojaves and lessers.

Jon (Precision Pythons) is local and I think he has a spinnerblast for sale. That would be a powerhouse breeder for sure! I think I'm kind of partial to that recommendation though LOL

I agree with Nick. We have quite a few balls but have started with mostly females because they take longer to get up to size. We have a few simple projects to start. This year we are putting albino x albino and then we are going to take pinstripe and cinnamon to our female bee.

Nick's approach sounds good about getting a normal female and buying a male later (when the female may be closer to being breeder size because the price may decrease) that is double or triple dom/codom combo. If you have a set project you are interested in working with then shoot for it. Remember which ones are recessive (albino, pied, ghost, clown, etc) You will need a het or 2 of the recessive otherwise the offsprings will be hets for that recessive trait.

Jon @ Precision Pythons is super helpful too and has a lot of nice morphs in his collection that he could set you up with.

Good Luck.

Thanks for all the info Nick! It's really helpful. That's a really good point about the male/female size difference and depreciation. I may have to rethink that.

I can see the male recessive vs dom/codom line of thinking too. I think I'm leaning towards codom but still have a lot of learning to do about all of the different morphs.

So a BEL (blue eyed lucy I assume?) doesn't describe a single morph type. And all of the morphs you listed are interchangeable in producing one? BP genetics are incredible. What an amazing area.

I wish I could get one now but I think I have to hold out for the Spring. The spinnerblasts are really nice looking though!


This post warning about a new reply while writing yours is a great forum feature!

Thanks for the advice too Stephanie. I think I may end up getting the female now and a male the following year. The pinstripe and cinnamon x bee sounds like a really neat combo. I'll definitely contact Jon and see what he has when I'm ready to purchase.

The only real difference between the BELs are super mojaves (darker sometimes with a bit of a head pattern showing through), russoXrusso equals a white diamond BEL (supposidly the whitest), and one more on the tip of my tongue... grrrr.

Butter to butter is suppose to cause funny eyes or heads but I'm not sure if that's proven.

There are also Black eyed lucys, fireXfire. Ivorys = YBXYB but I'm not sure what they are classified as.


http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showthread.php?89691-Bel

Oh the other ones are crystals and mystic potions. I think when you breed Specials or Mystics to one of the BEL complexes, you get a slight variation of the BEL but I'm not sure if it's still considered a BEL but they have blue eyes.

Okay, so lots of options but not all BEL morphs are equal. The link was really informative, thanks. Beautiful snakes in the pics, especially the top 2.

Just to add a little to what Nick said about male VS female. While the male depreciates just the oppisite is true with the female. The female will double or even triple by the time she reaches breeding weight. Just as an example you can buy a female mojave hatchling for 250-350 dollars. Try to find a 1500 gram mojave female for less than a 1000 bucks.

My favorite BEL's are Mojave to Lessers. They look very white, if you start with good stock for the parents.

Good points from Nick and the others. I would say that you should go for a combo morph with several genes. For instance, I am saving up for a pastel lesser, that way the offspring will have more variability than if I just had a pastel or a lesser. On the other hand, I would never knock the most basic morphs. ANY morph female is a useful female!

Edit: I wanted to add that the benefit to purchasing a cheaper morph is to find out whether you even LIKE ball pythons before getting into breeding them. For the longest time I did not like ball pythons because I was used to more active colubrids. Also...they smell different. Funny but true.

Thanks for all the input! I think I'm sold now on getting a female first. You can do all the reading in the world but there's no substitute for advice from people who are in the field. I guess now the waiting game begins.

I like mojave bels they just have more character.

I think for our BEL project we are going Lesser x Butter... ?? our Mojave female and butter female probably wont be ready until next year?

Wow, I had no idea there were so many BEL projects! I was thinking of starting one myself with my female mojave and a lesser pastel (which I do not yet own, and the mojave female is still a baby, haha). Maybe I will think of something a little different if VA is already going to be filled with BELs!

I always say get what you like, or get what you need to get to that snake that you cant afford. Half the fun is making what you want. Takes longer but....... the smile on your face when that snake pips make the wait worth it.

DaganGecko wrote:

Maybe I will think of something a little different if VA is already going to be filled with BELs!

You have to look at the odds of producing one though... every show I have been to, I don't see an abundance of them... in Tinley there were less than 10 at the entire show...

Just to update this thread, I went with a female Lemon Blast from Jon at Precision Pythons. Thanks again for everyone's help. I added a pic below but added more pics in the showroom.

beautiful....

yes very nice!

Thanks guys! I almost got a bumblebee but this one was just too beautiful and had a really great temperament.

Sweet Lemon blast!

In my opinion you should buy multiple mid-range to expensive females to raise up, and while you're doing that save up the cash to buy a legendary male or two to breed them... Your snakes may depreciate in value, but if you hit good odds breeding multi-gene animals the offspring will be far more valuable than the original snakes you purchased.

Example: breed a male killer blast (kind of expensive) to a few female ghost mojave's (mid-range price), and if you're very lucky you could end up with a super pastel pinstripe spider mojave het ghost... how's that for firepower?

Good suggestions, Mike. I need to add a few more females to my collection, but I am hoping to save up for some nicer morphs. I think Jabberwocky has chosen a REALLY good project.

smb2585 wrote:

DaganGecko wrote:

Maybe I will think of something a little different if VA is already going to be filled with BELs!

You have to look at the odds of producing one though... every show I have been to, I don't see an abundance of them... in Tinley there were less than 10 at the entire show...

The odds aren't really that bad... it's just that most people would rather breed mojaves, fires, lessers, etc into other morphs to enhance them. There's really not that much to get excited about ANOTHER all white snake... Oh but THIS white snake has a little more yellow on the sides....

I do think the super phantom/mystic/etc snakes are very cool, though!

From my point of few bels are awesome "trophy " snakes to have to show off to your friends and people that know Nuthing about breeding genetics. They are very visually stunning snakes, but sadly they don't Cary the white with them when bread back to many other morphs.

They are cool by themselves, but the problem is they are kind of useless when you combine a white snake with most morphs... ever seen the difference between an ivory and a pastel ivory? or how about an ivory spider? Not a whole lot different from a normal ivory...

Thats why people tend to breed the base morphs into others to enhance them, instead of together