First off, congratulations to everyone on some fantastic litters! Lots of cool stuff going on with Sharp combos; Motleys; Paradigm, Prodigy and other T-pos stuff, to name but a few.

We've been away from the forum for a while - ok, we snuck in a post the other night responding to a question about probabilities in a litter from 66% het bloods, but that's the first one in months. We haven't even had time to lurk!

2007 has been a slugfest for us. We went into the season targeting just four females, and with the combinations we had going (good genetic combos, but all pairs included either a first-time female, a young/first-time male, or both) we figured if any two of them went it would be a good year. As it happened, exactly two of them ovulated and started doing all the things that gravid boas do.

The first of these was one of our big reliable het albino females that was bred by a first-timer 50% het albino motley. She gave us no post-ov shed, didn't put on as much lower-body size as we would have liked, and had a late mid-term shed, all of which suggested to us that she would be a slugger. About a week or two before her estimated due date based on her ovulation date, she dropped 24 slugs, 4 stillborn, and 2 premies that didn't live out the day. One of the stillborn and one of the premies were albino, so it's tempting to conclude that the motley proved out het albino. Except, none of the stillborn or premies was motley. The probability of no motleys in 6 is (1/2)^6 = 1/64. Not so bad that we would conclude that the motley absolutely wasn't the father, but bad enough to suggest that possibility (though no other male had contact with this female since the prior breeding season). We'll reserve judgment on the 50% het albino motley until we get a better litter from him.

The second was our chance at Sharp snows and snowglows - a triple het Sharp male to a DH Sharp snow female. This girl did everything right on schedule, except she wasn't putting on the kind of lower-body size we like to see. We feared she would slug out, but remained remotely hopeful that she might give us a handful of babies. At 97 days POS, along with 31 slugs (remarkable for a relatively small first-time female), were:

1 Sharp
1 Ghost 66% het Sharp
1 Anery 66% het Sharp
1 Normal 66% het anery 66% het Sharp




So we struck out on snows and snowglows, but got quite the variety pack for such a small litter! Plus, the litter proved out both recessive traits in the parents (both adults were 100% hets for anery and Sharp, but it's always nice to see it confirmed in the offspring). Here are a few post-shed pics:

Ghost 66% het Sharp


Anery 66% het Sharp


Normal 66% het anery 66% het Sharp


Nothing more to share for 2007 unfortunately! But we have some interesting updates regarding our 2006 litters that we will post soon. Congrats again to all on the exciting boa developments this year!

Steve Reiners


www.BoaMorph.com

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