Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Just for kicks....my daughter has a wild caught hatchling that's a yearling now. What could she breed with this snake in the future? Is it even a worthwhile project for her?

Most genetic traits in corn snakes are recessive, therefore breeding just about any morph to a normal will give you normal-looking babies.

Tim

Third Eye

Being a wild caught corn snake, it is very unlikely it will be carrying any recessive genes that could combine with others to show morph babies.

Thus, it really doesn't matter what you breed it with, all the babies will look normal and be carrying the recessive trait of the morph you breed her with. Of course, if you keep those babies and bred them back to dad, you will see some of dad's morph showing up in the second generation babies.

As far as I know, there are no co-dom morphs in corn snakes. If they are, they are very few.

Thus, if you bred your normal corn snake female to a albino male..the babies will all look normal but carry a recessive gene for albino. These bred back to Dad (the females that is) will produce 50% albino babies and 50% het albino normal looking babies. So every egg lain has a 50% to look like dad.
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PHLdyPayne

Try to get another wild caught of the same locale.
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11.14 L. getula californiae (Cal. King)
2.3 L. getula nigrita (MBK)
1.0 L. getula floridana (Brooksi)
1.1 Pantherophis guttatus guttatus (Corn)
0.1 Pituophis catenifer catenifer (Pacific gopher)
0.1 Heterodon nasicus nasicus (W Hognose)
4.2.14 Elgaria multicarinata multicarinata - (Cal. Alligator Lizard)

Really you have two productive breeding projects using wild caught snakes.

First is to breed it with other corns of the same locality for locality specific lines.

Second is to outcross to a morph and thereby broaden the genetic diversity of some of the morph lines. By breeding a morph to a wild caught you will get normal looking offspring that are each hetrozygous for all the traits of the morph. These hets can then be bred to unrelated snakes of the same morph as the parent to produce offspring of the morph but which have a much broader genetic diversity. This strengthens the morph lines and counteracts the effects of inbreeding. This would make the most difference with newer morphs as they have the most inbreeding going on and have had less time for breeders to outcross the lines.

Unless the wild caught is from a in demand locality or a locality you have a person reason for promoting I would opt for the outcrossing option.

If you outcross and are interested in selling babies then I would choose a triple homozygous morph or a high demand double homozygous morph to breed the wild caught animal to. This will ensure higher demand for the offspring then the average normal with unknown hets.

Sean.