Sunset project

What would be your advice to someone who wants to get into breeding the sunset morph and is new to breeding?

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More or less the same advice I’d give to anyone starting out - invest in the highest quality examples of the morph you can find, make sure to look at the parents to see how they maintain their colors, avoid random “cheap” hets on craiglist, etc

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The most cost effective way is to buy a GHI Lemonblast and pretend to yourself that its a Sunset :crazy_face:

But really, if your looking to make some great looking animals then look for Sunsets + Lesser/Butter.
Personally i think this is the best route with sunsets. But its all down to what YOU like.

I’d also like to see a Black Pastel/Cinnamon Sunset Albino.

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I’m not in the sunset project yet but from what I can tell and from what others say there seems to be a good deal of variability in them. They seem to dull out quite a bit with age so I’d take your time and find out who is working with the best and brightest lines.

For a long term project I’d look to combine it with a recessive mutation. I know for sure sunset pieds and sunset ultramels have been produced and they are both incredible. I’m especially fond of the ultramel combination. Since it works so well with ultramel it will likely be great with monarch as well, if you wanted to go with something more rare/expensive/high end. On the other hand I dont think it pairs well with all melanin disrupters, such as banana. The banana sunset combo seems very washed out and not all that exciting to me but others disagree. I’m anxiously awaiting the first lavender albino sunset combination to be revealed because there’s a ton of potential there. I also think there’s a good chance it will work magic with the desert ghost combination.

With a low budget I’d get a couple het sunsets and a het sunset male to start producing some visual sunsets. With a higher budget I’d get a group of ultramel and/or desert ghost females together and then a visual sunset male to make double hets, the more useful dominant mutations attached the better. And as always with everything get females first then the male a season or two later.

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Expensive project for a first timer, just so you’re not regretting it later, be sure this is what you want to do.

From there, it’s about what you want to produce? Theres only a handful of combos made so there’s a ton of potential. I thought the banana sunset was insane when I saw one. Every year we should see more and more of what can be done with it.

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Hi and Welcome to the community :smiley:

unless you have loads of money, Wait till its cheaper like I have too :roll_eyes:

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Thank you everyone for your advice it helped alot!

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We dove into the sunset project pretty much as soon as we decided that we wanted to breed ball pythons with the goal of making it a business and it was one of the best decisions we ever made. In no particular order, here is what we have seen with the project over the last 2ish years:

  1. The prices have gone up and supply can’t keep up with the demand. When we got in, you could find visual single gene sunsets for about $4K. Now a single gene male runs between $6k-$7k because more amazing combos have come out (like the Sunset Ultramel, Leopard sunset combos, YB Sunset combos, etc) and the demand has increased.

  2. If you are buying hets, buy from someone you trust. Brad Boa and Brock Wagner (who are partners on their sunset project) are arguably the leaders of the project. (We have gotten all but 1 of our sunset animals from them and they are awesome and we highly recommend them). RL Exotics is an awesome guy and he just listed a bunch of het females on MM for a stupid low price that is actually having us eyeing a couple for ourself. That said there have been listings in the past that have seemed a bit strange and have had people in the Sunset Breeder FB group asking each other if the person selling them is legit. Whoever you buy from, definitely vet them first.

  3. This is gonna be our first season producing sunsets and we (and we most definitely are not big breeders at all) have 18 people on our waitlist to get sunset or het sunset snakes. There is an insane demand for the project which I think will only increase as it becomes more affordable.

  4. The sunset project is still in the explorative phase and the best combos are still being discovered. Personally, I think dark morphs look the best in sunset though tastes are super subjective. Sunset seems to be a morph that people either really love or hate and the same goes to for its combos. I also love banana sunsets though others in this thread have different opinions so it is really up to what you like. (Also, I’m pretty sure Brock hit the Lav Albino Sunset in the last couple of months and it pretty much only changed the pattern and not the color. I don’t think he has publicly released pics yet though.)

  5. As a new breeder (which I’m assuming means you don’t have many breeder females yet), my advice is to get as many het sunset females that you can afford and a few powerhouse females that are not het sunset (like 5 gene females or relatively newer morph female like Mandarin, Stranger, Confusion, etc) and grow them up. Once they are a year old, buy the most powerful visual male you can afford, then pair him to your hets and hold back visual females and pair him to your powerhouse non-hets and expand your sunset project into new genes. During the 2ish years you are growing them up, market yourself on social media specifically for the sunset project, once you have babies available the people in the project and those who want to get into it will know you and will be comfortable buying the hets you have made. If you don’t market yourself beforehand you might have trouble selling animals or might have to sell them below market value as people will be taking a risk buying such an expensive animal from someone they don’t know.

Overall, the sunset project is amazing and I am stoked for you to join it!

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Great insight Steven!

That’s disappointing to hear about the sunset lav combo, I definitely thought it would boost color significantly, at least to a similar degree of something like enchi.

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