I was hoping to get into one high-end recessive and i love the potential of both and how they look im just not sure which to choose as both are awsome but i would only be able to choose one so what is your opinion. Which shoukd i choose.
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I personally like what Zebra does. Although not everyone sees the value in it and I think there’s a cheaper mutation that might be the same (I don’t recall which).
Visually I don’t like monsoon as much but it might have more potential from the financial side.
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Welcome Upstream. I hope you enjoy this site and find it helpful.
From a monetary standpoint, they are both pricey now. The thing is that if you purchase a female hatchling today, and a male hatchling in a year, you may be able to produce a first clutch by 2028. Who knows what pricing will be by that time and also, it’s very possible that both of those may be being produced by many breeders. So if money is the goal, you’re better of putting your investment in the stock market, a T-bill or precious metal. Those are all better investments than BPs. While they may lose value, BPs absolutely will lose value. They are like cars. Some hold their value longer, but they are depreciating from day one.
So presuming you are not just looking to cash in, what do you really love the looks of? That question should be all encompassing meaning, not just Zebra or Monsoon. There are at least 1500 plus pages of animals to peruse on this site. Investigate the different combos. Find what you like best of all and produce that. This should be a passion not a product. The goal of shooting for a specific combination, and the anticipation of seeing what comes from that first clutch, is so exciting. That should be the goal and it should give you a rush.
Now if that is still Zebra or Monsoon then fantastic. Just don’t make a hasty decision because of the allure of big dollars, or the bloom will fall off the rose pretty quickly. I wish you the very best with what ever you decide. I can’t wait to see what direction you take and what you eventually produce.
Best, BP
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Ok thank you that makes sens im not really in it for the money but if i do make some that would be nice i just wanted to invest in a gene that i like that may make some money.
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It is McKenzie, and yes it is an identical/compatible
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Don’t come into the breeding game thinking you’ll earn a financial return. That’s a slippery slope that a lot don’t recover from. I’d personally choose Monsoon over Zebra, but you could also go for Striker which is close to Zebra/McKenzie but has not been proven to be the same. 
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Im not planning on making any money but i want to get into a gene that hokds its value for a while and has demand so that one day im might make it self sustaining and make it my life. So my goal is to make it a business and make it my work hopefully.
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Speaking as someone that has been involved with ball pythons for over two decades, there is no morph that holds value. They all lose value and bottom out. The whole of the hobby is built around the MLM/ pyramid scheme design
While they may leverage around a morph (or small number of morphs), the people making it a career are doing so based more on total production volume than anything else
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Oh i guess i shoukd have known that but thank you. So is there no way to really make it a career then.
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The rat race is generally about combos to one up the competition. Some are concerned that monsoon is too overpowering to lend itself to making good combos. I like monsoon on its own (don’t know anything about zebra) but am hoping to improve it a little with higher contrast maybe by adding axanthic and or desert ghost (I’m very far away, hardly even started).
A lot of work is going into developing a het monsoon test. As it has some pretty good tells already lots of possible hets have been produced so will be interesting what will happen if a test comes out and turns a lot of those into 100% hets. I expect both RGI and Grey Rider Reptiles to be on different podcasts within the hour. Not really expecting a monsoon test to be announced by either but will certainly tune in for any hints that might drop.
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You can make it a career, but not by approaching it with a ‘What is the expensive-morph-of-the-minute’ kind of mentality. There is a reason that the running joke in the hobby is “How do you make a million dollars breeding ball pythons? … … … Start with two million dollars”
If you look at the big breeders, they have huge facilities with hundreds of breeders that they use to make many hundreds more animals to sell. Sure, their social media focuses on the glitz and glam things they make to build the hype, but the reality is that it is a lot easier to sell a hundred $200 snakes than it is to sell one $20,000 snake
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So i only can get 1 more snake so then what should i do the snake i have that is to size is a normal and one close to size is a redhead hypo huffman yellowbelly
Given that your other one has hypo, I’d pick another snake that is at least het hypo and has complimentary morphs to readhead, huffman and yb. Maybe something with gravel or asphalt as well which would give you the chance to make hypo highways or hypo freeways. Leopard would also look great in that combo. And I probably wouldn’t bother breeding your normal, but keep it back as a nice pet.
As the others have said, I wouldn’t count on making a career or a business out of it, and going into it with that expectation is setting yourself up for disappointment. Instead, keep ball pythons because you genuinely enjoy the species and working with them, breed only because you enjoy creating beauty and want to aim for producing high quality animals, and sell for the purpose of finding good homes for the animals your brought into existence.
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What would be the best double recessive for zebra like puzzle or sunset. Those i think would look good.
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It’s whatever you personally like @upstream_morphs
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Maybe chasing the fad if the minute but I want to add axanthic desert ghost and hypo in everything.
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I think you are on the wrong track if you are looking for a high dollar male to pair with relatively low value females. You should reassess if that’s your current plan. To start off your project you should have a goal in mind. For example, if you chose monsoon you would want to start with two to three female het monsoons (at minimum), preferably with some dominant genes attached. Maybe a visual monsoon if funds allow. Then the following year you would sink more into a single male, maybe two males so you have a backup, that are at minimum het monsoon, but preferably visual monsoon to increase your odds at visuals.
What you don’t want to do is start off with females such as normals and animals that are not carrying the recessive gene for the project in mind. By the time you are producing visuals the value of the project will have declined so far that it is likely you will have a very hard time breaking even.
I personally wouldn’t plan on breeding your normal. For your hypo I would look into getting some sort of double recessive that is visual hypo (since they are relatively affordable), maybe something like a DG Hypo with some dominant genes attached. But even then you only have one female for that project and it may not be viable to sink a high dollar amount into the male for that. If you have some funds to play with I would start fresh with a new project in mind, get your females this season, and get a male next season.
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@biologicalcanvas the reason why i have a normal is because it was my first pet but everything else makes sense
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