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Motley Question

S

sab49

New member
I'm looking at buying some butter motleys and I was wondering which pattern is the best for producing easy-selling clutches? I love all of the different motley patterns from partial stripe, to "dots" running the entire body, and dots fading into almost connecting saddles.

I have a beautiful pair of gold dust motleys, one has the partial strip and "dots", the other has dots fading into almost connecting saddles. The butter motleys would obviously be bred to them to produce some of each morph. Which pattern would sell the best?

I'm new to motleys so any help from all of you experts would be appreciated in my new purchase.
 
If I was going to buy a motley, I would prefer one with as close to a perfect pattern as possible. Perfect, round mots. No Q-tips, dots and dashes, partial stripes, any of that. Especially in a butter- it would have to be perfect- nice, round mots.
 
I love them all, but IMO, I don't think you'll be able to breed specifically for one motley pattern and not get some of the others. There may be some selective breeding involved, but I've not experienced any trend to the pattern of the hatchlings when compared to that of the parents.

I have seen several breeders price the pin-striped motleys higher than the regular motleys, so they may be the ones more highly prized.
 
Motleys can be very variable in pattern and you aren't guaranteed to get exactly what the parents are (or either a recognisable fusion of both).

I have a GoldDust het Mot female that I pair with a Butter Mot male with a near perfect stripe. They produce clutches that include a mix of Mot patterns. Some have the perfect classic clean Mot spots, some have Dad's stripe, some have a partial version of the stripe, some just have oddly joined markings rather than anything clean. I've even had a couple of perfect Hurricane Mots.

You can't really predict what sort of pattern you'll get from a Mot pair unless you've line-bred them both yourself for a specific look over a few generations. The potential variety is one of the joys of breeding Mots!

As for what will sell best - that will vary from area to area. This time last year where I live, I couldn't give away Butter Mots or Caramel Mots of any description. Best advice is to check out your local reptile shops and breeders to see what the "competition" is producing. Now would be a good time - if they have any of last summer's hatchlings still left, that's an indication that they're not selling well in your area.

Bear in mind that the Corn market overall has been very slow over the last 18 months. You aren't actually guaranteed to sell any particular morph at the moment.
 
Thanks for all of the insightful replies! I thought maybe that offspring of mots would be highly variable despite the parent's patterns but I wasn't sure. Sounds like I should just go for what I like and hope it's what others like as well in this slow market.

I think I'll get some butters with perfect mots to mix in with my variable gold dust mot patterns. This way I should probably get a an interesting mixture of many looks with some being perfect mots as well.
 
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