I’m pretty much over it now, of course, but I was feeling pretty picked-on that day.  Missing so badly on the odds was one thing but I rubbed salt in my own wounds when I thought about the time, money and effort I had put into the parents; both of which I had raised from hatchlings.  All I could think about was how financially invested I was and how the production yielded nothing better than I could have made with a much less genetically impressive pairing.  For this clutch I was producing at a level that was genetically many seasons earlier than where I should have been.  With money on the line, that’s a tough pill to swallow.

Misses like this one are a seasonal reminder that ball python breeding is packed full of randomness and chance.  When you swing for the fences you run the risk of striking out.  And I’m doing it again this season.  I have pairings that have the potential to make some truly amazing things …if I can hit on the odds.  But when I hit on something big I’m notorious for holding it back; very little of my highest-end production makes its way into the collections of others.  Yes, sir!  I’m a morph hoarder.  And every year I rely on a lot of  luck to take me to the next level.  Luck, unfortunately, is a fickle friend.

Producing something next-level is a relative thing.  The animals that I am lamenting missing on today will be commonplace in the near future.  Perspective is important.  But lately I have been contemplating the intelligence of trying to hit on long odds.  The wisdom behind the answer to my contemplations can only be had after-the-fact, when I am  looking at the results of my production.  My decision will be interpreted as shrewd if I meet or beat what the Punnett Square suggests.  When I miss on the odds I can’t do anything other than think that I chose poorly.  But why did I try for such long odds in the first place?  Three reasons:

1. To make money
2. To take my collection to the next level.
3. I can’t afford to buy the super-crazy, cutting edge, designer morphs.

If I produce something amazing there is a pretty good chance that it will become a permanent resident in my collection, something I plan to use in the future to take me to even higher levels.  I’m using genetic luck to kite myself to ever higher heights.  The fact that I keep the coolest stuff I produce means that I am letting the betterment of my collection trump my desire to make money.

I’m starting to think that I shouldn’t be doing it this way.  As time goes by I am beginning to realize that it’s not smart business to try a hit tiny sweet spots and incredibly long odds.  This is especially true considering my admission that I’m just going to keep the best of the best that I produce.  The more intelligent bet is to re-align my pairing strategy to maximize the production of genetically less impressive (and statistically easier to produce) animals.  I wouldn’t produce much in the way of super-amazing combinations but I would produce a lot of moderately-priced, easy-to-sell, animals.  And if you don’t already know, it is fairly easy to sell lots of animals that are $1,000 and under before you sell a single $3,000+ animal.  The pool of buyers increases many-fold when the price falls to a certain point (usually under $1K).  This means that if I stop trying to go next level on every pairing and start trying to maximize lower-end morph production I will have many more babies to sell …and then I can buy the super-crazy morph from someone else who did take the chance.  Let someone else swing for the fence …and miss.  But I’ll be there, with cash in-hand, when they hit.  Let them be the one’s who count on long odds while I  produce lower-end animals in greater quantity, sell them easily and quickly find myself with all the cash I need to buy the morphs I covet.  I can sidestep the brutality of the odds, letting somebody else take all of the risk; I lose nothing when they miss and stand to gain when they hit.  There are plenty of people out there who are trying to hit on long odds.  Most of them will miss.  But some will hit on something silly-cool.  They took the risk, not me.  And by not even trying to do it I am guaranteeing that I won’t be one of the disappointed many that misses on them.  But, because I have so much desirable and affordable production to sell, I can safely conjure the cash (or trade) to make their animal my reality.  And the best part is that it’s still a win/win; everybody makes money.  I’m just doing more to guarantee mine.

This all makes a lot of financial sense.  But in the end I’m not sure I can do it.  The desire to make something cool, despite how painful it is when I miss, is a really tantalizing lure.  It frequently overrides my desire to make money.  I guess that means that this is more than just a business to me.

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

The pace of production for different morph combinations is always accelerating.  As breeders get their hands on more and more multi-gene males and females the combinations are beginning to leap forward almost exponentially.  In 2011 it won’t surprise me to see an abundance of new six, seven and possibly even eight-gene combinations.  It’s not as if they will be available in quantity, though.  Even with three or four genes on each side you still require a massive amount of luck on the odds.  Because they are so hard to make it will still be several years before they are available in any measurable quantity (and there is still plenty of time to be the first). For the next several years getting your hands on a four, five or six-gene animal is going to require you to produce your own or be prepared to drop significant cash (or comparable trade).

So if you really want to be the first the make something amazing what do you have to do?  The answer is quite obvious, I suppose.  But if you’re lagging behind the bigger names in the business you may be looking for a way to gain some momentum.  There isn’t much opportunity for the short road but here are a few quotes that nicely illustrate my perspective:

“Those who live within their means suffer from a lack of imagination.” – Oscar Wilde

• I hate to be the bearer of bad news but you are far less likely to be in a position to name a morph if you are not financially aggressive.  Who am I kidding?  Let’s call a duck a duck:  you will likely need to lean more toward financially reckless.  This immediately narrows the field of contenders.  Most of us don’t have the stomach to spend multiple thousands of dollars on a single animal.  Even if the money was available we wouldn’t do it.  And in reality, you need more than one.  These days you will need several heavy genetic hitters because big genetic combinations require you to come to the table with powerful potential in the sire and the dam (and that requires money).  Having a high-end male paired with lower-end females is a great way to make some money but don’t expect to be wondering what you are going to call the babies when they pip; it’s almost guaranteed that somebody else beat you to it.  I admit that it is silly to spend big cash for the sole objective of being able to name a ball python morph.  It’s really more of a fringe benefit.  It remains, however, largely true.  Can you spend five, ten or fifteen grand on a single snake?  Most people wouldn’t even consider it.  I hem and haw over how much to spend on a new dishwasher but I barely flinch when spending multiple thousands on a snake.  I’m one a relative few that has that special kind of addiction.   From Mr. Wilde’s perspective, I, and others like me, have ample imagination.

“Luck favors the prepared.” -Louis Pasteur

• Louis Pasteur is frequently referred to as the king of accidental discovery so I take him at his word on this point.  The more opportunity to which you expose yourself the more likely it is that you will come across something amazing.  Put another way, serendipitous moments are less likely to occur when the “data set” is small.  What exactly does this mean for ball python breeders?  A few things:
  1. Don’t count on the odds to be kind. Punnet squares are not guarantees.  More often than not I consider them to be taunts.  Consider yourself fortunate if your production matches what the square suggests; your eggs have been sprinkled with magic fairy dust if you beat the odds.  Be sure to thank the Higher Power you deem worthy when it happens.  Sometimes it takes a whole lot of tryin’ just to get lucky once and painfully large amounts of time may pass in the process.  Ball python breeding is not a field of endeavor packed with an excess of guarantees.  Even though you may have the ingredients necessary to make magic you are going to find that you often have to try more than once to hit the sweet spot.  And if you’re trying to be the first to make something you need it to happen sooner rather than later; this particular facet of ball python husbandry is competitive.  To beat everyone else to the prize you need to get as many at-bats as possible.  Put simply, get as many high-end animals as you can to improve your odds.  Easier said than done, I know.  Please refer back to Oscar Wilde’s quote if you need to get the full spectrum of my point.
  2. If you’re gonna’ go, go big. We all have limits on money, space and time.  This makes ‘big’ a relative term.  To make magic you don’t have to keep thousands of animals but you do have to keep as many as your time, space and money allow.  Scratch that, you have to work within your time and space constraints; you need to stress the limits of what you define as affordable.  Yes, I know it is horribly bad advice to tell people to spend more than they can afford. In this instance, however, I am addressing the desire to be the first to make, and subsequently name, a particular morph.  If pushing the edges of what has been done is part of your game plan then you don’t get to be conservative.  You can expect conservative results if all you make are conservative investments.  Risk versus reward is always in effect.  If you only buy snakes that are $1,000 and less you are not likely to make the first of anything.  You have to have the largest, nicest collection that you can still provide with excellent care.
  3. Husbandry matters. Getting animals up to breeding size is a game of vigilance, chance and speed.  I have one word for all the people who breed for profit and say they “don’t push their animals” to get big.  That word:  bullshit!  When price is factored into the mix time is your biggest enemy.  Casually getting animals up to size is contra to the stated objective of making a profit and I don’t buy it when people tell me they aren’t in a hurry to get their girls on eggs.  On the breeder’s carousel the gold ring is only available once per year and missing it requires you to wait at least another twelve months before you get another shot.  That time is valued in cash.  Almost all of us are in a hurry to push that male past 500 grams and we hope and pray that our females blow right through the thousand-gram wall.  Most breeders will start breeding their girls at 1,200 grams, give or take, but the odds of a first-time girl going at that size are somewhat low.  The odds of the clutch being large are even smaller.  There is no substitute for bigger, older girls.  This, of course, takes time.  But if you want to have the greatest chance for success you need to make sure that the time is well spent.  You have to aggressively feed your females in the off season and you can’t waver in the slightest.  It’s not an exact science but bigger girls tend to produce bigger clutches.  One girl who gives you ten eggs is worth a lot more than those smaller girls who only offer four, five and six eggs each year.  Every extra egg that makes it through incubation increases the odds that this time around will yield the gold ring.  Set yourself up for success by adhering to a simple philosophy:  ABF – Always Be Feeding.  Feeding snakes should be your favorite pastime.  And before you heat up your keyboard flaming me for encouraging reptile obesity let me remind you that we are talking about ball pythons here; their appetites are sufficiently fickle that overfeeding is an infrequent problem.  Other species of snakes?  Sure, there are many python species that will get too fat.  But consider yourself lucky if you have a ball python that will eat often enough to look like most Americans.

“Collect opportunities.” -Nicholas Taleb

• Collecting opportunities means a few things to me.  In some ways it ties in with points I have already made about the size and quality of your collection but it also emphasizes the opportunity you have to leap forward by taking chances with the unknown.
  1. You can’t breed it when it’s not in the rack. When you come across an animal that fits beautifully into your collection, do everything you can to make it yours.  It is more than just a little cavalier to suggest causing yourself financial stress and/or harm over ball pythons.  Admittedly, it is not right for most people.  But people who are always going to be financially conservative probably stopped reading a while ago, anyway.  Much to the chagrin of my wife and business partners I have an incredibly optimistic attitude about my ability to make money.  It’s this mindset that allows me to actually pull the trigger and spend it.  I believe the pain to be temporary and I have faith that the investment will earn the money back multiple times over …most of the time.  Despite the tone you may interpret here, my risk-taking is quite calculated.  It’s aggressive but not to the point that I can’t pay my mortgage or feed my family.  Being happily married with healthy kids and a nice, safe place to live is always going to be cooler than naming a ball python morph.
  2. Dinker. A few of the bigger names in this business got there by being lucky.  Most got there through money, investment and time but there are a small few that saw something others did not.  They took a chance and bought an unusual (or not so unusual) looking animal and found that it was genetic gold.  The Orange Dream, Special, het Puma, Specter, and Yellow Belly are a few easy examples.  Most of these animals are not immediately impressive but when paired with the right mates something amazing happens.  Some breeders have an eye for unusual markings and have developed a knack for teasing new morphs from the DNA; others have just had blind luck.  In the end it doesn’t matter, though.  It all starts with the dinker.  The flow of unusual ball pythons from the wild has slowed in recent years but they are still arriving.  If you see something odd and unusual, pick it up.  Dinker projects are like lottery tickets; most are going to be losers but every now and then somebody wins big.  If you don’t dinker you can rest assured that it won’t be you.  Don’t bet on dinker projects to put you on the map.  Consider them a fun little side project that might, just might, bump you ahead in the game.

We’re all in this business for different reasons.  Some people could care less about the money, making something first or any of the other limited forms of fame and glory the business has to offer.  Others feel just the opposite.  They want desperately to be the first to make something new.  And there there are a huge number of us who could care less if we are the first so long as we can make some nice money from our efforts.  I find that I am most closely aligned with the latter.  More than once I have said it:  nobody keeps as many snakes as I do solely out of love for reptiles.  Money is the motivator.  Seeing something for the first time, something no other person has ever seen …that’s just a super-cool bonus!

Cheers,

Colin Weaver

My name is Colin Weaver.  I am a ball python breeder.  My best customer is named Colin Weaver.  He is also my biggest problem.

I can’t seem to get it right.  I’m in the ball python business to make money.  That’s not something I keep secret.  If I owned snakes purely for the love of snakes I’d own fewer than ten of them.  Instead I own hundreds.  I don’t know anybody who keeps hundreds of anything out of love.  Most people who keep things in quantity do so for financial gain.  I’m not different.

If you start out as a hobbyist you may find that you are lured into monetizing your operation.  You buy a pretty snake and say, “Hey, it would be cool to get another one of these and try to breed them.”  You buy a mate for your animal and that’s the first step down a long and expensive road.  With ball pythons it’s not so simple, though.  The color and pattern variations produce some very real problems that cause you to become a burden to yourself.  Let me explain.

Suppose you buy a male pastel jungle ball python.  They are pretty and quite affordable these days.  You also really like spider ball pythons so you buy one of those, too.  Your spider is a girl so you decide to pair the two up with each other.  Eggs are laid, incubated and hatched.  When all goes well what will you get?  A bumble bee (hopefully a few).  You could sell that bumble bee for some nice cash but are you really going to do it?  I’ll wager no.  You don’t have a bumble bee and they sure are pretty.  So you keep it.  Now you have (at least) three snakes.  What should have been a money-generating event actually turned into a collection-size increasing event.  You keep your bumble bee and also add a pinstripe to your collection.  You breed them a few years down the road and now all hell breaks loose.  You produce spinners, lemon blasts, more bumble bees and perhaps even a spinner blast.  Second verse, same as the first. You don’t have any spinners or lemon blasts.  You (like most other people) also don’t have any spinner blasts …until now.  Can you really sell them now that you have them?  Think of the possibilities they represent.  Don’t you want to have these in your collection?  What sense would it make to sell them and they buy them again later?  So year after year, clutch after clutch, you find yourself keeping the best stuff you produce.  You could, and arguably should, be selling these little nuggets but you just can’t bring yourself to do it.  So you become your own best customer and you are your own biggest hinderance to profitability.  It’s a vicious cycle and I’m in deep.

I, like many other breeders, keep back large numbers of my very best production every year.  I should be selling it, taking the cash, paying off my house and buying nice cars and saving for retirement.  But I don’t.  Instead I’m cash-poor and snake rich, always trying to one-up my own collection.

I can’t seem to drink my own Kool-Aid.  Sometimes you have to take the cash, sell the snake …even when it hurts.  But it’s oh, so very hard to do.

Colin Weaver

I love white snakes.  Beauty through simplicity.

Whether we’re talking about Ivories, Black-Eyed Leucistics or Blue-Eyed Leucistics I just don’t see how you can go wrong.  Shame on me but  I don’t have any Super Fire’s (black-eyed lucy’s) in my bag of tricks but I do keep blue-eyed lucy’s and ivory’s.  They’re awesome.

Every now and then I catch wind of someone talking about how Ivory’s aren’t very attractive because as babies they look kind of dirty.  What I ususally tell those people is that they need to see an adult Ivory.  With age comes some impressive changes.  Adult Ivory’s tend to be white as a fresh snow with a faint yellow line running down the back.  Jet black eyes, red irises.  R – I – D – I – C – U – L – O – U – S ! ! ! !  Wanna’ see it get cooler?  Peep this:  Pastel Ivory.  Imagine a white snake dipped in a vat of soft yellow glow; like the stain of a buttercup on your skin.  Sick!  I haven’t seen a super pastel ivory ball python yet but I certainly do look forward to the day.

The key to the Ivory ball is the Yellow Belly, of course.  Yellow Belly’s make Ivory Ball Pythons!!!  This makes Yellow Belly females the single most under-valued snake in the reptile business these days.  Like many other breeders I know, I have pretty much resolved myself to the fact that I’ll never sell another one.  Besides making Ivory’s the Yellow Belly gene is like a scrub brush for every other morph; it just makes it better.  I kept every female Yellow Belly I produced this year and will probably do the same again in 2009.  I may let a few go, but not many.  I’ll actually pick them up from others who are willing to let them go.  I’m not alone in my thoughts.  I did sell all of the Ivory’s I produced, though.  Gotta’ pay the bills, I guess.  If money wasn’t a factor I think I’d end up keeping 95% of what I produced.  If you’re a breeder reading this you’ll probably agree with me.  We’re our own best customer.

Click on each thumbnail for a full-size view.

[View with PicLens]

Albino X Albino Het
Albino X Spider Het Albino
Super Pastel X Black Pastel
Bumble Bee Het Ghost X Orange Ghost
Clown X Pastel Het Clown
Ivory X Yellow Belly
Pastel Lesser X Black Pastel
Pinstripe X Pastel
Pinstripe X Spider

I took this picture with my phone (which had a crappy camera in it) back in early 2008. I bred Ivory balls to a few Spider Ball Pythons in 2008 because I saw Spider Yellow Belly’s at the 2007 NARBC show in Chantilly, VA. To me they were absolutely stunning. They were the best looking Spiders I had ever seen. And that seems to be the way it goes with Yellow Belly Ball Pythons. Add that gene to anything and it makes it better. The Yellow Belly Bumble Bee (aka Bumble Belly) is ridiculous. I saw a few of those this year and remember thinking, “And I thought Bumble Bee’s looked awesome…”.

Take everything that has been done with designer Ball Python morphs and add Yellow Belly to it and it will be better than the original. The only exception I’ve seen to this is the albino. Albino Yellow Belly’s look like albinos. The difference is too subtle to be visually appreciated. I am interested in seeing what happens with Albino Spider Yellow Belly’s, though. Since Albino Spiders’s tend to be an overabundance of yellow/orange with the white of the spidering not standing out in most specimens I wonder if the Yellow Belly gene can clean that up and get some nice, high-contrast spider albinos. Time will tell.

Having a Yellow Belly Spider in your collection is a good idea if you want to make cool combos like Bumble Belly’s (aka Yellow Belly Bumble Bees), Spinner Belly’s (Spider Pinstripe Yellow Belly’s) and to the best of my knowledge no one has yet produced an Ivory Spider. My best guess is that it won’t be anything dramatically different than an Ivory but what if it does something else? You just never know with the Yellow Belly gene. It can unlock some really unexpected and cool stuff.

As I write this I have 1.0 2008 Spider Yellow Belly still available. Drop me a note if you are interested in adding him to your collection.

Colin Weaver

The Genetic Stripe Ball Python is a stunner. They are, however, highly variable. The best genetic stripes are the truest representation of thier name; an unbroken stripe running the length of their back …and nothing more. The three photos above illustrate a perfect genetic stripe ball python (click on each for larger view):

The key features I look for in a Genetic Stripe Ball Python that I want to add to my collection are:

• Lack of any breaks in the dorsal stripe (e.g. the stripe is solid, uniform and unbroken from head to tail)
• Little to no pattern on the sides.
• Not that it makes a difference in their appearance but they need to be rat feeders, too.

Genetic Stripe Ball Python: Great, but not perfect

The picture below is another Genetic Stripe Ball Python that I consider to be be a very nice animal, but not quite a perfect one. Her stripe is perfect, unbroken and exactly what I shop for. Unfortunately she has a small amount of pattern on her side. This is the functional equivalent of a beautiful model only being 5′ 5″ rather than the standard 5′ 7″+. It doesn’t really matter too much, she’s still a knockout. But she probably won’t make it to the Victoria’s Secret fashion show.

And here is another nice Genetic Stripe; he has a nice solid, unbroken stripe with just a touch of pattern on the sides. This picture was taken back in 2006 at Ian Gniazdowski’s facility (Outback Reptiles). She is not one of my breeders.

I have seen a lot of Genetic Stripe Ball Pythons for sale that are simply not very nice. Sometimes people try to sell them with special names to make it seem like they are something unique and different than a perfectly striped specimen. But seriously, calling an ugly Genetic Stripe Ball Python anything other than what it is (ugly) is like calling a brown diamond a “champagne diamond”. It’s just smoke and mirrors marketing. I don’t have any ugly specimens to show you because I don’t keep them in my collection. Do some searching on Internet and you’ll likely find some real brown-baggers out there.

As is usually the case, you get what you pay for when it comes to high-quality ball pythons. If you want to produce exceptional animals, price can’t always be your deciding factor. Sometimes it will cost you a little more on the front-end but it will pay off exponentially later down the line. Keep this in mind when you’re out shopping for a Genetic Stripe: No matter what the seller tells you perfectly striped parents (or hets that come from such) are MORE likely to produce nicely striped offspring. High quality begets high quality. Ugly Genetic Stripes with irregular patterns, broken stripes and lots of side saddling are more likely to produce the same. In a time when there is an even increasing amount of competition in the industry you don’t really want to be the one peddling champagne diamonds when the guy next to you is offering flawless gems.

Colin Weaver