The pewter morph of ball pythons are amongst our favourites around www.BallPythonAddiction.com. The pewter mutation is a morph that was first created by Greg Graziani when he crossed a pastel jungle and a cinnamon pastel. The Black Pewter line is a darker colored animal derived from breeding a pastel jungle to a black pastel. Some people prefer black pewters and some favor Graziani line pewters. They are both cool animals that make great pets and create great breeding projects.
Pewters are labeled as a triple-threat animal. When bred to a normal ball python each egg has a 25% chance of being a pewters, a pastels, a cinnamon, and a normal. Bred to a pastel jungle, one can possibly hatch six different morphs all in one clutch; pewters, pastels, cinnamons, sterlings, super pastels and normals to be exact. When bred to the multitude of morphs and combos today, the designer crosses become infinite. The Pewter morph provides pure, diverse breeding power. It can create a new inventory of different morphs for future projects, all in one breeding.
During our 2008 breeding season we bred a super pastel male to a spider female to make some bumble-bees. The super pastel was our primary breeder but we did back up that female with a pewter male once. Technically the clutch should produce 50% ‘bees and 50% pastels with the super pastel pairing. When we watched the clutch pip, we were elated to see a tiny bumble bee be the first to slit its egg. As the others pipped, we were scratching our heads to see dark colored babies. I then realized that the pewter sired the clutch. We got seven eggs out of the spider female and the clutch consisted of two cinnamon spiders, one spider, one bumble- bee, one pewter and one normal. We had the opportunity to make cinnamons and pewter ‘bees with this pairing also. It was wild to see a spectrum of morphs hatching all in one clutch.
Pewters have dropped in value where entry level breeders can enter into some cool projects right off the bat. With a couple of successful breedings a ball collector can create some radical snakes. And that my friend, is what the addiction is all about!