Hey guys in my search for what morphs I want to get into first I think I’ve decided I’m going to start with a piebald! I don’t think I’m going to send the money on a visual but instead buy a 100% het male and female and breed them. As far as additional morphs, what should I be looking for that compliment piebalds well? One I am looking at is 100% het piebald, 100% het ghost, enchi, and pastel. Do these compliment piebalds well? I love any pattern changing and light color morphs. Thank you!
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The one that you are interested in would be great because enchi and pastel always look nice in pied and dont affect the amount of white much at all. If you want something to drastically change pattern then pinstripe looks much different in pied but the best thing to do would be to just look at all your options and get what you like and not what someone says you should get, the worse thing to do would get something just because its trending or popular at the moment because it may not be as popular a from now and you can not really go wrong with whatever you like for a pied combo because they all looks nice but some morphs such as spider can make a pied really high white but some people may like that. All your choice in the end. Hope this helps!
Thanks for the reply! say I bread the one I am interested in with a pinstripe visual, would any of the offspring be visual pinstripe?
Yes. And you need to give yourself some genetics education before you start making breeding plans. World of Ball Pythons and Morphmarket have genetic calculators you can play with to get some visuals of some morph combos. The nice thing about Morphmarkets is they link any luck f the combos you entered that are listed on the marketplace so you can see what they look like and what they sell for.
And I’m not sure off the top of my head the best place for this…I just spend countless hours on all kinds of sources but anyone on YouTube that has a good explanation of the difference between co dominant and recessive traits etc would be a great place to start. I’m sure you can find some reading material out there as well.
No shortcut to understanding where you should go. None of us can just tell you. You need to put the research in until you kind of have an idea of an end goal for a project then work towards it from there.
Piebald is a great choice. That’s what my first project is going to be as well. They have great looking combos with almost everything, been around a long time so the market is as low as it’s ever going to go on them, they’ll always sell for you, and they are readily available so whatever breeding stock you want you should be able to find.
Yes I’ve been doing tons of reading and watching videos about the differences of recessive, Dom, co dom etc and how to make the gene mapping charts, it never ends! I know I won’t breed for another 6 to 8 months at least to make sure I have plenty time to understand everything. But in the meantime id like a cool pet that will be a good breeder for the future! Thanks for the help
Small correction here - Enchi has a massive impact on the amount of white expressed, Pide Enchis tend to be very low-white
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Really? How interesting, I always thought that enchi just happened to be more white just from chance since the amount of white isn’t certain most of the time in a normal pairing.
Does fire result in mainly white piebalds as well? Im also looking at a fire piebald and pastel piebald
Yes fire pieds are almost always very high white unless you add a gene that decreases the amount of white.
Pieds are a great morph to start with and in my opinion go great with lots of combos. If you could get a visual that’s great if not and decide to go with a het, try to get a double het like a dh hypo/pied for example.
Ones that compliment pied well are the ones you can tell right away so these:
Axanthic
Ultramel
Enchi
Albino
HI OD
And more
Another neat option that hasn’t been mentioned is working towards the Lavender Albino / Pied project, aka “Dreamsicle”. These are more difficult to hit on because it involves two recessive mutations that require two copies of each gene to show visually. Lavender albinos are more rare and sought after compared to standard albinos so there would be a price increase. Double het pied/lavs are relatively affordable and worth the small cost difference IMO. A good option could be to get a double het lav/pied female and in a year or two get a pied het lavender male (or a lav het pied, which are sometimes more affordable). Your statistical probabilities breeding a double het pied to a pied het lav would be:
12.5% Dreamsicles
12.5% Lavender Albino het Pied
37.5% Pied (66% chance at being het lavender)
37.5% Het Pied (66% chance at being het lavender)
So you’d get pieds and have a shot at producing a dreamsicle.
It’s hard to go a bad direction with pieds. Chris Hardwick put out a video recently outlining some different options to add or decrease the amount of white. Check that out if you’re interested:
And here’s one of Justin Kobylka going over some nice dreamsicles:
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When doing double recessives is better having one animal visual for trait 1 and het for trait 2 and the second animal visual for trait 2 and het for trait 1 doing so you are quaranted to have at least 100% double hets rather than 66% possibles.
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Of course it is better to have more homozygous versions in the mix with double recessives but they are are double the cost. Considering the value of the animals the OP is considering an $800 - $1000 single animal investment is likely out of the question. Starting with a cheaper double heterozygous female keeps the initial investment under $500. Males can currently be found for cheaper (I got my pastel lavender het pied for under $500) but wont be needed for a year or two anyway. With around $500 to spend now, and another $500 to spend in a year or two for a male, keeps total project cost under $1000 and maximizes potential by getting the most male for your money as the market shifts. But yes, if one wants to sink 1.5 - 2k into the project, go for a pied het lav or lav het pied female to start. Better yet, get double homozygous versions and sink 3.5 - 4k into the project. Budget is a fairly important variable 
. Double het lav/pied may even be out of the question financially, in which case a good alternative may be looking into standard albino / pieds. Just throwing some different options that weren’t mentioned previously. Pied plays quite nice with various heavy melanin disrupters like albino/banana/etc.
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