New to the breeding side of things

I am interested in getting into breeding ball pythons and was wondering if i could just breed any 2 morphs for example a pieball with a banana or do they have to be specific and what will the outcome of such a mating would be. Thank you any tips you may have would be greatly appreciated.

First of all, welcome to the community! This is a great place to learn and I hope you stick around.
Some morphs are recessive and some are dominant. All morphs have 2 different visual outcomes, there are 2 alleles and if the morph occurs on 1 it is different than if it occurs on 2. The recessive morphs need 2 copies to be visual, if they have 1 copy they don’t show any visual effects (called hets, stands for heterozygous) but if paired to a 1 copy snake or 2 copy snake can produce 2 copy snakes of that morph (to understand inheritance research punnett squares). Dominant morphs also have 0, 1, or 2 copies of the morph. LIke recessive if they don’t have a copy they don’t show the effect. If it has 1 copy it is visual and you can see the effects. 2 copies and it usually (most morphs do) has a different visual effect than the one copy and can produce one copy (visual) snakes in a pairing. Piebald is a recessive morph and will produce het piebalds in the first generation, those won’t have any visual effects but if paired to a 1 or 2 copy snake can produce piebalds. Banana is dominant and if paired to a normal (no morphs) will produce bananas. Since it is a 1 to 0 copy pairing (punnett squares help here) 50% of the offspring will have banana (theoretically, it’s a chance and could produce more or less).

Research on the marketplace to understand how hets, 1-copies (won’t have het or super listed), and supers work. Run pairings through the calculator to understand how recessive and dominant traits are inherited. To really help understand inheritance you can draw punnett squares on a piece of paper and try pairings.
It sounds a bit complicated but once you learn how it works (which is quite simple once you understand terms, definitions, and mendelian inheritance) it seems very easy to do and breeding can be very enjoyable.

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Some traits (such as piebald, clown, axanthic, etc) are recessive, which means that you need two copies in order to produce a visual offspring of that morph. Others (mojave, fire, spider, pastel, etc) are called co-dominant, and only one copy of that allele is necessary for a visual phenotype.

Piebald is recessive and banana is sex-linked co-dominant, so the outcome of that cross would be a mix of banana het pieds and normal het pieds.

Before considering breeding I would spend some time learning the different morphs and how the genetics work. MorphMarket has some great resources

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Thank you so much for the warm welcome, i really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to explain this to me and it was very helpful i will be sure to research the Punnett squares and check out the different possibilities. What combination would you recommend the most? Thank you and have a great night

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Thank you for this extra knowledge I greatly appreciate it and I will be sure to check out that link. Have a wonderful night.

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I’m glad to help. :grin: For combinations you can do anything you want. Look through the marketplace and see what morphs and morph combos you like the best. I would recommend at least 1 dominant trait so you have visual results in the first pairing. If you want to additionally add a recessive morph you could do that too (ideally with a visual as one parent and a het or visual as the other). If anything specific stands out you can do just about anything you want.

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