Alright so first I went to the ballpython reddit with this, and discovered very quickly how toxic and ignorant the mods are, so I figured I’d try my luck here and see what you guys think, Apologies if this is too long.
To start, I’ve been in the reptile hobby since I turned 18 (27 now), and my love for them started well before that. My snake specific (and Ball Python more specifically)experience is more limited. Ive had one Ball Python and kept him successfully for 5 years, unfortunately an accident with a Ophidiophobic ex cut that short and I havent had a snake of any kind since.
Fast foward to now, and i’m back in it, just got my (currently unamed) boy yesterday. I dont plan to breed him for a long while, if ever. But its something I’ve always been interested in and wanted to get into to. Ive done fairly extensive research into breeding and Ball Pythons as a whole and plan to do even more, but I figured it’d be nice to get opinions and advice from people more experienced than myself and possibly learn something I wouldnt have otherwise.
My questions are;
1.) If I do decide to get into breeding, what are the most important things for me to know, and any tips and tricks you guys might’ve picked up over the years? I’m mostly looking at the safety and comfort of the animals, but any advice is welcome.
2.) Ive added a picture of my boy in his current setup and a picture from the breeder. I know that breeding for morphs is usually just “whatever you like best” and obviously watching out for life altering defects. But if he were your snake and you were breeding him, what kind of morphs would you breed him with and what outcome would you want from the pairing? According to the breeder, he is Banana Lesser Leopard Cinnamon (I’m still learning to identify morphs myself)
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That’s a beautiful little guy to start this new chapter with for sure! He’s a lot like one of my favorite girls.
For the first part:
Every snake is an individual. You will eventually figure them out but it can take time. One of my girls is super defensive and can’t be trusted to not harm herself in anything she can see out of. One of my rescued boys is super shy and has bad scars from a burn so he’s another one that does better in a tub vs a PVC or what else. If they’re not eating or striking out at everything, they need something changed in their care, even if another snake is fine with the same setup. The only thing that never will change is proper hot/cool temps, basking spot temps and base humidity.
Make sure to know where an exotic specialist is by you. You don’t want to be hunting one down after a snake has already been injured or suddenly becomes ill.
The market is oversaturated and most likely will continue to be for some time. So even when you do start breeding, remember you may also need proper housing for all the littles after as well, maybe for quite some time…which is where the recommended breed what you want really helps. I wouldn’t wanna have morphs I don’t even like looking at for a year or more. Lol
As far as the morphs go… I personally love the BEL genes like lesser and Mojave and such, but with leopard and banana or something else, it could be a bit more difficult to ID and all white snake. There actually is a flashlight trick to ID banana in BELs though.
The leopard and cinnamon can look really great when combined with other dark genes like GHI or Nyala. Enchi and cinnamon are an allelic combo that just brings some nice pop of color on a darker snake… Super cinny or cinny and black pastel can cause kinking or facial deformities though, so that can be one to avoid.
Anything else … I’d take a look at the morphmarket sales site and set the availability on search to ‘any’, then pick a couple of you boy’s genes to see some combos people have posted with them. You might see something neat and the genes your boy doesn’t have is what you would look to find in a female.
The morphipedia on the page is also really great for some quick information on gene types too
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He really is beautiful isnt he, thank you.
I knew each snake was different and they all have different personalities and preferences and whatnot, but I never considered trying different setups for different snakes. Thats definitely something I’ll have to keep in mind.
There IS a vet that takes snakes nearby, but I havent been there yet so hopefully they have the required knowledge/skills … I assume they would since they accept snakes? They usually work with farm animals though which is why I’m not sure. The vet I used to go to is an exotic specialist and I know shes good, I could still go there, but i’ve moved since then and its alot further away now.
The market saturation is the main thing the reddit mods were getting onto me for, and I knew it was oversaturated but apparently its a bigger problem than I originally thought. Regardless, they were extremely rude about it and I feel like it’d be much more productive to educate someone instead of harassing them and name calling. And besides, my first (and maybe ONLY depending on how things go) clutch is mostly for myself, I do have 2 people who have already said they want a snake from me if I do decide to breed, and i’m prepared to keep the rest of them for their whole lives. That being said, I already have a handful of empty enclosures with extra heat sources and such, and I dont plan on breeding until I know I can house ALL of the baby noodles myself. I would like to get into selling eventually, but we’ll just have to see I guess.
As far as morphs go, breeding what you want seems like much better advice now, I always saw it as more of an “everybody likes different things” thing, but when you put it that way it makes alot more sense. Also, I do love BEL but I figured his other Genes might mess with that. I did however consider a darker snake like Black Pastel and knew about the Super Cinny problems, but I was somehow completely unaware that Black Pastel was part of that too, thats really good to know.
I’ll look around a bit more and try out your suggestions, I really appreciate you taking the time, this actually helps me quite a bit, Thank you.
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Heres a few morph reccomendations I can throw your way! 
Pewter (Cinnamon + Pastel). So a female with pastel could potentially produce pewters with your boy.
Black Pastel + Orange Dream pairs really nicely with Banana imo
Super Bananas. The chance of producing one is low but if you pair a banana > banana you might produce the super variant of the morph.
GHI always throws some really neat looking BPs imo
Clown. A lot of morphs + Clown go well together but you’d have to breed hets or visuals to get clown babies
Mojave + GHI looks nice if you want to go for darker morphs.
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Plenty of good advice above—
A tip that might or might not be relevant.
I’m not sure where you are, but, if your in an area with a winter, Normal house heating is sometimes not enough for a safe ambient temperature.
A room thats too cool overnight when the heating is usually low or off, or just cooler at night, can cause problems depending on your enclosure heating system…
For example, If your only heating a third of a tub/tank or just hot end, The hot end can struggle to be hot enough, the cool end can be too cool and that makes the acceptable range in the enclosure very narrow, maybe smaller than the animals body.
So supplementary room heating may be required or secondary heat mats in the cool end of the tank.
When I switched from temperate climate snakes to ball pythons, i found this out the hard way.
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