NEW BP MORPH!!!

A few random points:

Albino ball python hatchling pairs are not currently $11,000. I think albinos started out around $7,500 each when first proven in 1992. The first year or two might have been a little higher but they stayed at $7,500 for several years. I understand that they are currently somewhere around $1,500 - $2,500 each. My point is that if they only dropped roughly 75% in 12 years it is unlikely that the will drop to $200 (apx. 90% drop) in the next 4 years. In fact, I think the support price for albinos in the pet trade will probably be closer to $500 so they might not get to $200 at all. The reason albino burms are less in addition to the much higher production rate is that there is less of a demand for a python that size.

The cheap price of normal ball pythons is due to the apx. 150,000 they harvest and export from Africa a year, not captive breeding. Actually the fact that the pet trade absorbs this many is a testament to the appeal of the size and personality of ball pythons. Sure there are a lot of other great snakes out there and everyone is entitled not to like balls for any reason (feeding habits). You really can't justify breeding normals from an economic standpoint at this time with the competition of the imports. Morphs are a good marker to distinguish between import and true captive bred (yes I realize a few morphs are imported each year but if you saw an albino burm in the pet store where would you think it came from?).

Although it might take longer to get a high asking price you don’t need to hold baby ball pythons for 6-7 months before they are old enough to sell.

Some morphs actually encourage out breeding. Spider and pastel males are routinely bred to the massive genetically diverse pool of imported normal females. Even some recessive morphs are being out bred. With the sporadic pied marker it is commonplace to outbreed as much as 3 generations before trying to produce pieds with possible hets.

Thanks for the post Randy. Like you said, prices have gone down and will continue. I never said they would be the same as a normal but that the current prices couldn't be sustained. Personally I don't think they'll hold at $500. I think they'll have to go down from there even. Pet owners don't usually pay that kind of money for reptiles. Only the breeder or collector do and most of those I talk to are only paying high prices now because they hope to make a lot of money once they breed them. Flood the market with any animal and prices fall. They did with burms, they did with Pit Bulls (don't like them but my friends do), so did sugar gliders. Every pet fad fades, it's just a matter of how long it will take. Though I hope the BP is around for a long time, I personally hope this "morph" craziness doesn't. I don't mind "morphs" that have very apparent changes like the albino or pieds but some of the others are simply silly and need to go.

How would you know what average pet owners would pay for a pet? I know lots and lots and lots of people who buy high end animals as pets. Their was even a guy who bought a 10,000 piebald bp just as a pet! A good example would be exotic bird owners. I go to this big pet shop every once in a while and they are constantly selling birds that sell for 1,500-3,000.
Although unlikely for someone to go out and pay 10,000 for a pet snake, many people would be willing to pay for an albino at 2,500 due to its beauty, colors, small size, attitude, and that it is a long lived snake.

Well BMX...how would I know what people would pay for snakes...let's start with the fact that I breed them and sell them to local pet shops. I know the owners of every pet shop in the Kansas City area (my cousin owns one of them) and I know what the owners will buy and they know what people will buy and are willing to pay. Also, I go to every reptile show in the MidWest and NEVER see anyone buy a high end morph. Maybe I just don't hang out with rich people who are willing to spend that kind of money. People I know have bills to pay, jobs to do and most even have kids that will need college eventually. The vast majority of people are like this and not rich and willing to drop that kind of money. I base things on the average and the majority and not on what a few people will buy. If you can drop that kind of money all the time and so can everyone you know then either you all have no bills or responsibilities, a large trust fund or inheritence, or you still live with mom and dad. Either way, that's still the minority and the minority don't set prices or drive the economy....the majority do.

I know that ball pythons are less prolific than burms, and strongly suspect they are less prolific than sugar gliders and even pit bulls. On the demand side only the sugar glider could come close to having as big a group of appropriate potential owners.

I have to think that for morphs as attractive as albinos and pieds pet owners will be willing to pay what they do for purebred dogs or low end exotic birds. The difficulty of reproducing these morphs should prevent them from becoming any where near as common as the current level of imported normals. I just don't think enough thousands and thousands of people are going to do the work to breed that many.

They already are. There are breeders all over the country trying to cash in on the craze now. Like I said in an earlier post....just look at how many new internet businesses have shown up on www.kingsnake.com and over 90% of the new ones in the last year are doing nothing but BP and Boa morphs. At the rate of growth for these breeders then the production rate should of course increase along with it. In the end leading to...(drum roll)....a supply far surpassing demand and that equals falling prices. I do believe they will still stay in the $200-$300 range but as I've said before..the current prices in the market will not hold.

Whether piebald and albino ball pythons stop dropping in price at $200, $500, or $1,000 it’s still a lot more than normals. It would take 6,000 breeders producing 25 balls each a year to equal the last export figure I have for normals (150,0000 a year). I just don’t think there are 6,000 people willing and able to work that hard and carefully for $200 each (or $100 each if we are talking about $200 retail). Even a big breeder like Ralph Davis who employs people to help him will only produces about 600 balls this year. That’s one box out of Africa.

This is RIDICULOUS! I've only read a few of these posts, but it's already apparent to me that the ball python morph trade is just going around in circles. People buy them as a breeding investment, and then most of their offspring go to others wishing to make a breeding investment, and so on. I'm going to assume it's not true, but from these posts, it seems as though all the BP morph advocates care about is making money. If I'm going to spend that much on a pet, it will be simply because I enjoy that particular snake, not because I want a large financial return. Come on people! I'm not trying to be mean, but I need someone to straighten this all out for me, because I just don't understand. I personally think that normals of any species are beautiful. I don't find the beauty in their colors... I look down further. The way their head is shaped, the contour of their body, and most important, their personality. That's how I choose my reptiles. I wish more people would quit playing god, but I know it's not going to happen until they realize that normal people looking for a pet (and not a breeding investment) don't buy these expensive morphs unless they really have the money to spend.

I must apologize, I'm a bit opinionated on the subject, but I think everyone is. By the way, those of you that think inbreeding is a good idea, here's a website with info about inbreeding dogs. I think even just this site shows enough that inbreeding should be avoided whenever possible: http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/inbreeding.htm

Some people are only in it for the money, some or not. It doesn't matter if normal people wanting a pet will buy these morphs are not. As long as ANYONE will buy it, they will remain that high in price. I love Ball Pythons too (not just the morphs), but if I can get a few thousand a snake I'm not going to complain about it.

There are tons of people in it just for the money. Most of them don't even have a single morph. They just buy $7 imported normals and try to pass them off as some $2,000 mutation that they simply made up.

Well Ryan here seems to see things closer to what I've been saying and yes right now the breeding and sale of BP morphs does seem to be a giant circle. BMX_Python said that him and everyone he knows is willing to drop thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars on Morphs and myself have never seen anyone spend more than $700 on a single snake and it was a baby Womas and not a BP Morph. This topic has grown so much and so fast because it's a subject each side feels passionate about. One side says the price will always stay high because of low production of BPs and they say they sell well now. The other says that the only people buying them are people wanting to breed them to get rich and so many are being produced now that prices will go down. It's a vicious cycle but that's the general idea.

Oh and the inbreeding thing...I've never supported that of course but the only arguement I've really heard for inbreeding is someone saying that, as far as they'd seen, inbreeding doesn't hurt BPs. I don't buy that and I'll never support inbreeding for whatever reason.

Never said it didn't affect them at all, I simply said that from what I have seen there where no deformities (I probably butchered that word, but oh well). Most morphs aren't really as inbred as you may think. The only one I know of that had been inbred a lot is the Platinum. Ralph has been breeding sibling and such together trying to figure out the gentics, and hasn't had any messed up snakes hatch out from it.

Also, nobody said the price would stay high forever. They will obviously go down. Just not as fast as you think.

And,yes, they do sell. If they didn't the prices would obviously have went down faster then they are. Just look at the ad SK has up in the Classifieds right now. A few weeks ago they hatched out 3 Genetic Stripes. They already sold 2 at $20k each. I'm not saying they all sell this fast. Sometimes they will sell in hours, sometimes you may have them for sale for months.

You have to look at who bought those 2 genetic stripes for 20k. I'd bet money they were sold to another breeder who wants to breed them together (more inbreeding) so they can be one of the first to offer them for sale to make money. It simply seems to be greed that's driving the market. I do know people that would love to buy something like that but they simply laugh at the prices. Like me, they think the prices are obnoxious and would rather spend their money on something like a car or a down-payment on a new house then pay that for a snake that could lose 90% of it's value in 3-5 years.

It was not the same person, nor could they even be used to inbreed considering all 3 where males. But I do agree it was to another breeder. Also, the Genetic Stripe will not lose 90% of it's value that fast. Hardly anyone even owns one.

And why do you think that every morph must be inbred? There are 3 or 4 different lines of Genetic Stripes. And there are tons of different Albino and Pastel lines, as well as 4 Axanthic lines. And most other morphs such as the Spider, are outcrossed with normal females.

The only morph I have seen any problems in is the Caramel Albino, but not even that is from inbreeding.

I'm not saying that people inbreed because it's required to gain that particular morph but that people buy, say, 2 albinos from a single litter from a breeder and then plan to breed them together to increase the number of albino babies. Perhaps well known and long time breeders don't do this but new breeders looking to make a quick buck usually do. This seems to be the majority of BP morph breeders right now. There are so many new breeders in this line that are trying to cash in on the craze that they'll do anything they can to increase the chances and increase the numbers, including power feeding to try and force the animals to breedable size sooner. Most new breeders just want to make as much money with as little work as possible. They don't want to actually have to care for 100-200 breeding pairs to keep the business going. Also, to clarify to others, I love BPs and breed each of my females every other year. My big thing is that a BP is a BP regardless of color and should never bring these kinds of prices and I still don't think the market will hold like this for more than another couple of years. Though low egg production might keep it going a little longer, all morphs eventually become old news and not the hot new thing anymore. Personally, I'm waiting for VPI's Ivory Blood Python prices to come down so I can finally afford one of those. That and the Hypo jaguar carpet python are the only 2 morphs I've ever seen that caused me to say "I HAVE TO GET ONE!".

My plan right now is to buy 2 female Albinos I found. This way if/when I hatch out a male Albino, I'll have 2 unrelated females for it to breed to. Then I'm going to see if I can trade the offspring for something like a Cinamon Pastel.

I'm not really to much into morphs of most snakes. I like Hognose, and Ball Python morphs. I need to find out who bought that Leucistic Eastern Hognose. That snake was awsome.