Normal Ball Pythons — The Perfect Snake

My passion with reptiles was first seeded in my youth, where my fascination with the all wonders of the natural world was infinite.  Not only did I watch any wildlife documentary that aired on television, but my wildlife library grew each year, especially with reptile books. I recall looking at pictures of ball pythons in these books, and was captured with image of this small sized chunky python, with its cool sleek shaped head, and exotic pattern. These images were not the fancy morphs and designer creations that we all know today, but were normal or wild phase ball pythons. The ball pythons portrayed were highly variable in colour and pattern as they are unique as thumb prints, as no two are alike.

The ball pythons in the first early collections were primarily all wild collected ball pythons brought overseas under CITES documents. Many of these animals did not fare well as they were loaded with internal parasites and ticks; only the strong survived.  The acclimation to captivity was often a long process and getting them to feed was often a daunting task.  Breeding Ball Pythons was not a common feat but a true accomplishment in the early days.  The first reptile herpetologists did not have the instant information power of the internet, but exchanged knowledge by communicating by telephone with other reptile hobbyists and zoo keepers or meeting at herp club meetings. As captive breeding efforts established over time, captive bred ball pythons slowly entered the pet trade offering a hardy alternative to new pet owners over their rival imported captive hatched bush babies, exported by West African countries of Ghana, Togo and Benin.

Today’s modern ball python hobby today has advanced and evolved rapidly.  It is perpetuated by the desire of creating designer morphs; this would not be possible without giving credit to the normal phase ball python.

Normal ball pythons played active roles in the ball python morph craze when the first recessive morphs like piebalds and albinos were imported by US breeders.   These homozygous (visual) morphs were bred to normal females to create normal phase looking babies that were 100% heterozygous for those traits.   When these 100% hets were raised up and bred back to the visual recessive trait animal, the odds of each egg making a  recessive visual specimen such as an albino or piebald was 50%.  And when those visual (homozygous) males were bred to multiple normal females, a diverse gene pool was created for the purpose of strengthening those lines by future out crossing.

In examples of co-dominant morphs such as pastels, they theoretically reproduce themselves 50% of the time when bred to normals. In theory out of four eggs, 2 would likely to be pastels in good odds.  This is one main route breeders take to produce morph females to keep back and grow out into future projects.  It gets even more exciting when normal females are bred to multi-gene co-dominant morphs.

In the first scenario, we will breed a bumble bee, a double co-dominant morph (pastel X spider) to a normal female.  Our theoretical odds of each egg hatching would be:

  • 25 % Normal
  • 25 % Pastel
  • 25 % Spider
  • 25 % Bumble Bee

In the second scenario, we would breed a spinner blast, a triple co-dominant morph (pastel X spider X pinstripe) to a normal female.  Our theoretical odds are mind boggling, as the odds of each egg hatching would be:

  • 12.5 % Normal
  • 12.5 % Pastel
  • 12.5 % Spider
  • 12.5 % Pinstripe
  • 12.5 % Bumble Bee
  • 12.5 % Spinner
  • 12.5 % Lemon Blast
  • 12.5 % Spinner Blast

Many first-time breeders try to get a quick jump start into breeding projects and source out proven breeder normal females. Some breeders make available some big normal girls after egg laying season, as space is often limited and new grow out females are entering into breeding range. Every year we get approached with such requests, but we sit back and smile and kindly decline. We value our mature normal girls as many of them have proudly been produced in house; we are always making big plans for them. 😀

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