I'm currently doing the same thing as far as proving out a genetic trait. My best friend got two Colombian redtails back in 2001 from an ad in a local paper. Both were completely normal looking for the most part, the male just had one tail saddle that was slightly elongated but nothing spectacular or even what I would particularly consider out of the ordinary. With that pairing she produced a reverse stripe and a partial stripe/aberrant boa in the litter as well as a few with aberrant saddles. We bred her male to one of my normal females this year and produced a litter of thirteen - eight of which show aberrant saddles and/or tail striping. Needless to say, we believe without a doubt that the trait is genetic because my female produced one other litter (back in 2000) of completely normal but very nice colored offspring. We're pretty excited about raising these little beauties up and breeding the half-siblings back to each other...trying to see if it produces supers of the trait.



In order to prove out the genetic trait, you just have to raise up the offspring and breed them back to each other - trying to produce replicas of the original aberrant boa. Did either of the parent to the aberrant boa in the picture have that type of patterning? If so, then IMO you've already proven it. If they appeared normal except for exceptionally nice coloring, then you'd need to breed one more generation together with the hope of producing more like the aberrant baby. To me, it looks like a combination of the laddertail and striped pattern morphs. I don't know if it's new or not but I've never seen anything exactly like it. Beautiful either way...and I really have a thing for those with the funky patterns. After you prove it out, you'd then want to start outcrossing by taking any aberrant offspring and breeding them with other unrelated boas. While I know it's acceptable to breed successive generations of siblings together, I personally don't think it should be done past 2-3 generations due to the fact that inbreeding often brings out other undesirable traits such as health issues, etc.



The orange baby in your picture is also gorgeous...I can easily see where that would be a very popular boa because so many of us love those bright pinks and oranges. Are you also planning to selective breed for that color? As an interesting aside, I've read on a number of occassions comments from the people that had aberrant offspring just 'pop up' in a litter, did so because they bred a nice colored but otherwise unremarkable normal Bci. Rather makes me wonder if there is some link between those with the nice coloring and the aberrant traits.



Best of luck with your new project! They're just beautiful.



Raven

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