I saw a post the other day asking whatever happened to the VPI Snow, so thought I'd post some pictures from my collection. Below are three photos. The first is an adult VPI Snow next to an adult albino. The second is another comparison of the adult VPI Snow to a few miscelaneous ball pythons in our collection. The third is a photo of three female VPI snow hatchlings we produced this year.

The VPI Snow is definitely not for everyone, and it certainly takes a lot of time and effort to produce from scratch. I'm not sure I'd agree with those who say it just looks like a faded adult albino - I think it's prettier than that. Still, below are the photos so obviously anyone can judge for themselves and of course personal preference always varies. But aside from it's visible phenotype, it's certainly a very useful snake to have in a breeding collection.

For example, last year we bred our adult male VPI Snow to a pastel clown female and produced pastels that are triple het for albino, axanthic, and clown. We're excited about what those can produce in the future. In general, any time you can put two recessive genes into another animal at the same time it tends to produce offspring with powerful breeding potential, so I still view the VPI snow as an animal with very powerful breeding potential.

In any event, hope everyone enjoys the photos.

John Whalen
Hudson Valley Herpetological LLC

[ Hide Replies ]

• VPI Snows - hvhco, Sun Oct 4 16:14:34 2009
• RE: VPI Snows - EmberBall, Sun Oct 4 16:56:41 2009
• RE: VPI Snows - jeffbarras, Sun Oct 4 17:06:17 2009
• looks like an albino pied to me n/p - FRoberts, Sun Oct 4 17:33:52 2009
• RE: VPI Snows - hvhco, Sun Oct 4 17:46:02 2009
• RE: VPI Snows - jeffbarras, Sun Oct 4 19:15:09 2009
• RE: VPI Snows - theoddsgod, Sun Oct 4 17:19:28 2009