Hi All,
This June 2021, after 12+ years of selecting and breeding different PIED’s and Black Pastel Pieds for my Panda Project, I successfully hatched my second healthy clutch of Pure Super Black Pastel Pieds (Panda Pieds) without a single defect! I’m feeling extremely fortunate and here to tell you if you put in the time and are smart about your gene selection and use top quality animals avoiding in-breeding you can produce truly amazing panda pied ball pythons.
Keep it simple and use single gene pure genetics (no mixed morphs just black pastels and pieds and no in-breeding) and you too can do it.
Panda’s are a Very fun project with a super exciting sense of accomplishment when successful!
Good luck to all you Panda Lovers!!
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Well, you know, part of me was thinking that maybe I don’t want another ball python. But I could be persuaded to get one of those. Those are really beautiful!
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Out of curiosity, how many clutches/hatchlings with defects did you end up producing up until this point?
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That is what I am wondering. I am definitely not going to go through 10+ years of gambling and producing potentially fatally deformed animals just to make a panda pied clutch without kinks. I will just stick to suma pieds so I don’t have those issues. I don’t recommend new breeders that see this try it either, given the high probability it will end with needing to kill hatchlings. Suma pieds are a much better option.
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I actually just saw some Suma Cinnamon pieds on Instagram that were stunning!! They looked just like the traditional panda pieds, but without any of the risks of defects
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Thanks a bunch! I really appreciate hearing that… it took a lot of dedication and care not to mention too much money 
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Great question
About 10 yrs ago I produced the first clutch with black pastel Pieds and PIED’s with one single black snake with a large white band but it had a bad kink making it hard to eat and it passed. I also had a clutch with one other panda with a very slight kink. One mom was a black pastel Het pied, so I was shocked to even see the panda possibility. I sold that mom and dad and purchased higher priced top quality balls that were visible Pieds only or with only the black pastel gene… I wanted to keep the lines pure and not in-bred so I bought from different parts of the country and Canada. It worked!
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This doesn’t necessarily equate to success. I had a grey matter project with top dollar black pastels all unrelated and hatched kinked babies at a 10 to one ratio. Had zero issues with any other clutches that year. Super black pastel is just a huge gamble you could get lucky and hatch out healthy hatchlings but for me it’s not a risk I’m willing to take anymore after having to euthanize a bunch of them.
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Well in 12 years I’ve only had 2 bad eggs if you read my response above; so to me that’s not a bad record…
But sumacs and Vinny’s and mahogany are much easier and way less expensive but none have the pure jet black that the black pastels have if you find the best gene combination
I also bred Saddlebred horses for many years and was able to breed a line of world champion saddlebreds… I used the same concept and paired mares that lacked in the features my stallion had! Like the longest straightest neck and highest stepping front end etc
Hope this helps any new breeders!
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Sorry to hear you had such horrific luck. If that bad 10 to 1 ratio happened to me, I would have quit too.
Thankfully it didn’t… hearing these stories I may just have been extremely lucky but luck is better than skill sometimes 
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Actually Suma Cinnamon Pieds are the same jet black if you look into it, Sumas by themselves are more of a chocolate-y brown but once you add in the cinnamon it’s virtually indistinguishable from Panda pied. And no snakes need to be harmed in the process
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I think there are quite a few people who don’t admit the amount of “rejects” it takes to make good ones. I have zero problem admitting my personal experiences were a train wreck. Definitely not a project I would personally recommend.
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Another combo that makes a jet black snake is the abyss combo. Suma GHI. Can’t wait until someone makes a suma GHI pied. I will probably work towards that combo in the future myself.
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I agree and think a persons experience will help them decide which way to take a project.
I spent huge dollars from top breeders from around the world to make sure there was no inbreeding and no other gene mix to dilute the jet black I was after.
Other breeder friends bred black pastel Pieds with yellow belly or fire or ??? mixed in & the result was that the black is just not the same jet black like mine.
I personally don’t consider any Panda a real Panda if it has any brown in it! That’s just the purest in me. It doesn’t mean those chocolate black snakes aren’t beautiful… they are amazing… just not pure jet black, which was my attained goal for my own enjoyment and I didn’t put any babies to sleep… & had only one death in 12 years.
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Hope you successfully produce the one you want!
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Actually a suma pied is more expensive than a panda pied. I can get a female panda pied for as low as 3k, but the lowest for a female suma pied is 7k. I don’t even know if a Abyss (suma GHI) has been made available for sale yet or how much that would cost. I imagine the first suma GHI pied that comes out will be minimum 10k. They are easier in the sense that they have zero chances for genetic deformities. Definitely not less expensive right out though. I imagine you might mean less expensive in terms of time put in given the chances for deformities in panda pieds.
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Ashley,
Actually you are correct in the amount of time it took but I didn’t have bad luck with kinks like many people are describing so I was lucky or fortunate in choosing the mates.
Regarding cost and expenses… the first true black pastel pandas started around $150,000 each.
I just took out a small account so I reduced my one female with only 2 black patches by $2,000 to get on the morph site again and be under the price limit.
Most of my pandas have at least 3 jet black patches and since none of the pandas I’m selling have any defects, the genes they carry are proven to eliminate most of the risk. Breeders understand that in-breeding and most supers have a higher risk of kinks and other imperfections but that’s a risk to produce any cool super combo.
Some people’s luck is terrible like the breeder that put 10 animals to sleep to get 1 healthy one!
My luck has been the complete opposite and I don’t expect any defects in my future pandas… we will see 
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That’s not true there are plenty of super forms that don’t produce any defects.
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You may be correct but I’ve learned to never say never 
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The Abyss has a faint pattern to it. And as it aged, it browned out some
I will echo Shaun here, this is not true of most supers. The SuperBlk and SuperCinny and BlkCinny have a predilection to kink. That has been show to be true over the decades. SuperButter (Lesser) have a predilection to bug-eye.
SuperEnchi - No kinking issues
SuperOD - No kinking issues
Ivory (and the rest of the group) - No kinking issues
BlkEL (and the rest of the group) - No kinking issues
SuperPastel - No kinking issues
SuperGHI - No kinking issues
SuperRedStripe - No kinking issues
etc., etc., etc.
It is not (exclusively) about inbreeding, it is about the nature of the gene itself
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