What could I do with these two morphs?

Pythons Ball Pythons
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Been out of the breeding game/hobby for quite some time (almost 12 years). I remember watching guys like Brian Barczyk, Ralph Davis and a few others do some crazy things with just a couple of gene combos.

Fast forward 12 years and I am stunned by what you can do now. A buddy of mine knew I wanted to get back into owning ball pythons as a hobby with the potential to breed down the road (nothing crazy). He had a few females and basically gave them to me for next to nothing and I started plugging a few genes into the Morph Calculator but I went down a rabbit hole and got lost.

With that said, here is my question: I was hoping someone could point me into the direction of what I could do with the two females I currently have which is:

Female Pastel Lesser Leopard Het Hypo
Female Pied 66% het hypo.

I understand what I just asked above is quite a loaded question so it might also help if I tell you some things that have caught my eye (and what caught my eye is more of a wish list).

  • Dreamisicle
  • Ultramel Pied Het Hyp
  • Super Enchi Pied
  • Clown Pied

If what I listed is impossible to make with what I have, no worries, I understand this type of question is tough. Open to some cool ideas since I honestly don’t know what all is out there.

Thanks for the thought and time.

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Caught this before turning off the lights! Welcome to a great family! Best place ever for reptile fans! I can’t help you with your questions but others will chime in with plenty of advice for you!

Best of luck with your projects! :blush:

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Welcome back to the hobby~

Definitely take some looks around the morphipedia or the sales section here. Getting familiar with the genes you have first is going to be the most important.

It looks like you really love the look of the pied genes! The following is going to pretty much be about your pied girl since you seem to like those most. My suggestion to start is figure out a budget for yourself while shopping around with the next info in mind:
-Pied is a recessive gene, so unless the male is het (single gene-can’t see it) or pied (double gene, so you do see it), all of the babies will just carry that single gene from mom, making them all hets.

-Your pied gal is 66% het hypo. That means that both parents were het for hypo. and you have a 2 out of 3 chance for this gal to also be het hypo. You won’t know unless you test breed her to a hypo/het male or they have genetic testing for it now as well. Hypo/ghost/orange ghost are mostly compatible. This will NOT be compatible with Desert Ghost.

-The slightly cheaper and easiest way to work towards most of what you want is to get something that is het for pied. A lavander albino het for pied, ultramel het for pied or clown het for pied. This will get you one step closer because you will get a mix of babies, but in theory half of them will be pied het for the dad’s visual gene. At worst, they will be normal looking but double het for both genes.

-Breeding something that is double het will be a bit tougher. You can end up with het pieds that are 50% het for the other recessive. That means 3/4ths of the babies will look normal. The 1/4 that ARE pied, half of them will be hets and the other half will not. So it’s a messy gamble.

-Enchi doesn’t work the same as a recessive, so if you buy a super enchi het pied, all of your babies will be visually enchi. Half of them will be pied.
If you breed an enchi pied to an enchi pied, you get a mix of pied, enchi pieds and super enchi pieds. You can still buy an enchi pied and have a mix of pied and enchi pied offspring.
Enchi pieds also tend to be a bit lower white, but not always.

For your other girl, Lesser is part of the Blue eyed lucy complex. You can look into working towards that or there are a lot of really cool other combos you can make with those genes.

Hope that gives a little bit of an idea. When you first get back into it, all the talk about recessives and incomplete dominants and allelics will make your head spin, so feel free to ask questions too~

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Hey There,

Really really appreciate the response. Great feedback and I’ll definitely check out the suggestions.

That double het does sound like it gets super messy and my head was spinning when I was reading the odds.

I’ll also take a look at the other genes in my other girls. I like the suggestion of the Lucy project and I love the leopard gene.

Thanks again.

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Desert ghost would be a good gene. And desert. If you mix desert with a hypo/ghost you make hypo/ghost desert. Desert ghost is not the same as that. Dessert ghost is recessive. Hypo/ghost is recessive. Desert is incomplete dominance morph that means you can a super form of Desert that means you have two copies of Desert in one snake so if the super Desert to anything all babies will have desert in them. You check out dreamsicle and orange dream and mandarin. Honeycomb project that Kinova is on. Check kinkova, always evolving pythons, and ozzy boids

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