Would the clown morph be a good starting morph? I keep looking to see what catches my eye and I am in love with the leopard pastel clown combo. Another snake that i want is a Blue eye Lucy and something with the bamboo gene. Which combo would be a good starting point? Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
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My first ball python was a pastel het clown, so I definitely feel you with the clowns…l personally love clown, leopard, pinstripe, chocolate, woma, butter, just keep browsing and see what catches your eye. Have you tried the morph calculator to see what combos you can make? I’m kinda on a stand still too, my kids are all a bit young so I’m kinda just waiting around.
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There are several factors here
First your budget
Second YOUR goals, do you just want to have fun and not care if you don’t make your investment back and you end up keeping the animal you produce, do you want to break even, do you want to make a profit?
Third YOUR vision
To mean having your own vision is likely the most important one because YOU will care for those animals and unless it is something that you really like all of the sudden a fun project can quickly turn into a boring chores.
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Hi Stewart, I dont have a huge budget to get started with. I would like to start with around $1200-1500. I am hoping to make money for my project to pay for its self. As far as the look of snake that I enjoy is clean patterns, bright snakes with dark lines. Clowns, Desert ghost, and I really love the freeway stuff. But alot of these projects are way out of my price range.
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the 3 that I picked the only 1 is the bamboo. 2 bamboos make a white snake. Or a bamboo and a lesser. But I prefer the clown stuff. Desert ghost and freeway look amazing.
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I have always been a big fan of the recessive stuff… Clown, pied, dg. They are long term projects that really give you a true feeling of accomplishment when you finally hit that recessive combo especially after you put so much time into making them. Choose what you like and what you will enjoy producing. The sky is truly the limit. Good luck and I hope you find your dream project.
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@rickynegron it’s depends on what morph you wanna work with. Budget is key too, don’t spend all your money on one expensive snake. Another key is male to female ratio! When starting off, I was taught by my reptile mentors to get more females than males. The females take approximately 2 years to grow to breeding size and males take about one year. You could also buy snakes that’s already ready to breed! But if you wanna start with clowns, go with clowns 
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Definitely go after whatever you like best, and be patient in searching for them. If you’re going with recessives, consider if you want to start with hets or not. If you get hets, make sure you look at the parents.
There’s also a lot of variation within each morph. Think about what features you like to see, and choose your breeders accordingly. With clowns, for example - do you prefer lots of teardrops, or clean side patterns? Are there particular clown combos you really like? Leopard, spotnose, and banana seem like popular picks to combo with clown.
My clown project currently consists of a lesser het clown male and two sibling pastel 66% het clown females I’m hoping will prove out. At some point I’ll probably pick up another het clown female, maybe leopard or some other morph.
1200-1500 is plenty enough to start a small clown project, keep an eye out and you can find good deals on quality animals, we spent about 800 for our trio, Enchi clown male, and 2 clown females, all from reputable quality breeders, Or you could get a really nice male and a few het females. Easy to start a nice project on that budget