Honestly, you never really see adult lavender ball pythons in person. You get blown away when folks showcase their prized breeders, but, is there a way to discern quality of hatchlings to improve your odds of the highest color stock?
I get it, ask for pictures of the parents, seek RDR lineage, etc. But sometimes you don’t get what you ask for. Are there any tips or tricks in purchasing baby lavs without lineage info or parent pics?
I only ask to see if there is a way to broaden the selection process, because getting so picky to demand specifics from all breeders can definitely limit the actual results.
I do have my eye on a few select breeders at the time, but it sure would be nice to open the options up further.
And maybe I am wrong to assume that a high quality adult would always produce offspring of the same caliber. I would hate to think that, but I am open to learning more about this gene, as I have seen quite a variation.
We are continuously building our collection and I am very focused on selecting the best of the best, this one has just confused me so far!
Sometimes even if a high quality adult looks amazing sometimes the babies are “meh”. my best producer is actually one of my het females. Her babies are consistently amazing and she isnt even a visual and it’s not because of what Male I put with her. Shes been bred to different males and the babies dont differ much at all in terms of color and intensity.
Quick disclaimer that I don’t work with Lavs yet, but one thing I’ve learned over the last few years of breeding is that the quality of the babies depends on both parents. A high quality female will most likely produce high quality offspring, but only if paired with high quality males. The reverse is also true. So to get the best looking babies, you need a high quality pair… or trio, or breeding group, depending on how big you want to go with the project.
When working with recessives, I feel it’s best to either buy high quality visuals (whatever high quality means to you) or if you want to buy hets ask to see pictures of any visuals in the same line. (Either the parents, or if the parents are both hets a visual sibling.) Then you can see whether the visuals in that line are up to your standards.
If you are breeding to make hets (by breeding a visual recessive to a snake not carrying the recessive gene) the quality of the non-recessive snake matters too. I made the prettiest Enchi het Pied that I’ve ever produced this year because the mother was a very nice looking single gene Mojave. I’ve bred the male Enchi Pied to several other females with varying results. Her great genetics gave the babies more color and clarity than most of my other females.
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I’m glad you touched up on this.
I was wondering if breeders had a way of predicting the odds pattern-wise.
Do you believe your female het has a “enhanced/stronger” copy of the lavender gene or do you think it is just random.
Do you think the offspring of your het will carry that forward into the next generation if so?
I do believe she has a stronger het gene because no matter the Male the babies always look nice. I think just like how their are low expression visuals their are also low expression hets and so forth
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great question. Spent a lot of time and effort this summer doing the best I could to make sure my first females were the best quality I could find.
Lots of cool ways lavs can go. Not sure what direction you’re hoping to take it but I think we all know who has the best dreamsicle stuff lol. There’s only one GOAT 
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I’m interested in who this GOAT is. I’ve only seen Billy from Mutation Creation pop them out, I know others have them but I’ve just not watched anyone else. if he’s not the goat your refering to I definitely need to see this. 
Are you wanting to make dreamsicles also? They’re stunning.
The dreamsicle is my dream (excuse the pun) pet. I haven’t come close to finding anything even in its league looks-wise.
At the moment I have no chance of being able to afford one but with some major saving I’m hoping to be able to buy the building blocks to make a dreamsicle in the future. I want the top dogs in my collection to be Dreamsicle, Piebald and Lavender albino… It’s just a really nice coincidence that piebalds and lavender make dreamsicles.
I’m not after becoming a big time breeder, I want to own my own reptile supply store so I want to try and do this with as little excess snakes as possible.
It will still be 3-5 years before I get to my goal so hopefully dreamsicle prices plummet before then and I can just go out and buy one.
Even if not though, they would definitely be worth the effort and wait to get one.
I don’t want to offend anyone else so I’ll PM you lol. Yes the dreamsicles are incredibly dreamy. Haha
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