Question about breeding

[jemhidiahssj4]

I am new to the BP community and was wondering what type of male morphs would produce some interesting offspring with my normal female? If there is any information you have for me it would be greatly appriciated. Hope to hear from someone soon.

[BrianB]

Well, I'd suggest starting off with a little reading on morphs. The Sutherlands have some good info on their site www.ballpython.com. Of course, you can just google for ball python and get a lot more info, but I think some of the articles there will be a good start.

Now, as to what would combine well with your female: Any co-dominant morph will. That's because if you breed a co-dominant to a normal animal, about half the offspring will show the co-dominant trait as well. That will give you an immediate result. A lot of people start off with pastels for that reason. Pastels are the least expensive co-dominant out there. Spiders are also very popular, but start out at around $6k or so for a male. The rest of the known co-dominants are still holding at pretty high prices, as they are relatively newer, and/or combine into other projects that are much more high end, so the animals end up being largely held back by breeders, making a shortage of supply to meet the demand.

Here's my project, also starting out breeding BPs: I've got several normal females I'm raising, and a lemon pastel male. I plan to hold the female lemon pastels back and raise them, and buy a Spider male with proceeds from sales of the male pastels I produce. I'll breed that Spider to the lemon pastel females, which will (hopefully) produce a few Bumblebees, which show both the pastel and spider traits. Of course, while the lemon pastel females are growing up, I'm going to breed the spider to my normals, too, to make some spiders. (Hopefully to sell some to buy piebalds =)

[jemhidiahssj4]

so i have to have a Co-Dominate to produce anything other than wild type BP's what about Dominate. and name some other types besides pastel and spiders that will produce something other than wild type's with my normal female

[BrianB]

so i have to have a Co-Dominate to produce anything other than wild type BP's what about Dominate.

I don't know of any dominant ball pyton morphs. If you had a dominant morph, then all of its offspring would carry the trait, though.


[QUOTE} and name some other types besides pastel and spiders that will produce something other than wild type's with my normal female[/QUOTE]


Nope. Go look at the site I gave you. Or NERD's site. Both have extensive morph lists with pics. Anything marked co-dominant would be the answer to your question.

[CornNut]

[QUOTE=BrianB]I don't know of any dominant ball pyton morphs. If you had a dominant morph, then all of its offspring would carry the trait, though.[QUOTE]

Spider and even Pinstripe MIGHT be completely dominant. I don't think a homozygous animal has been proven for either morph yet but some speculate that the lack of a visibly different looking homozygous yet from spider X spider breedings or pinstripe X pinstripe breedings indicates that the homozygous spider and pinstripes will look just like there heterozygous forms. It's also possible that either or both mutations are co-dominant homozygous lethal.

If a completely dominant morph is eventually proven you would still need a homozygous animal for all of it's babies to be hets showing the trait. For example, a heterozygous spider (most if not all the visible spiders so far are heterozygous for the spider gene) only passes the spider gene off to about half of it's offspring because it also has a normal copy of the same gene. Only a homozygous spider could be sure to pass the spider gene to all of it's offspring.

Dominant just means that it only takes one copy of the mutant gene to completely dominate the normal version of the gene so the heterozygous mutant is just as completely mutant as the homozygous mutant. You still have both heterozygous and homozygous genotypes for dominant type mutants and the same rules as always apply to the genotype breeding results (i.e. het X normal = 50% chance for each egg being a het or a normal). The only difference is that with completely dominant type mutations the heterozygous genotype animals are the full-blown mutant phenotype.

[BrianB]

There ya go. Facts! Thanks CornNut.