Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just got this adult female corn in a trade and the guy I got her from said she is a normal amel but from the responses I got in my below post now I'm not so sure. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

I think she is a very nice yellow amel that is possibly a butter outcross(het caramel) Maybe you should get a nice male caramel or butter to breed her with???
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~~~Amy~~~
my zoo LOL
corns
1.0 caramel/amber het butter motley-Phoenix 1.0 sunglow motley-Eli 1.0 ghost-Alex(kinked) 0.1 charcoal-Siva 0.1 caramel het butter-Kilowea 0.1 snow het motley-Zhaneel
leopard geckos
1.0 hypo tang-Pablo 0.1 normal-Valentine
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**coming soon--1.5 hatchlings and 2 more clutches**

I sense frustration in your posts. Join the club. It's getting harder and harder to tell what we have just by looking. By definition the person you got it from is right. It is missing black. Therefore it is amelanistic.

This industry is getting to a point where you can't always trust your eyes. While an amelanistic is usually just an amelanistic, it can be more. In this case, I believe it to be an amelanistic het. for caramel, but I could be wrong. It could be a butter with very dark markings.

Understand that nobody is going to be able to tell you exactly what it is except the person that bred its parents. Even if we give you all our opinions it isn't going to change what it is or isn't. You don't want to breed it and sell babies based on what the "audience" says it might be. Therefore, until you do breeding trials, all you really know is that it's an amelanistic. It might be homozygous for caramel or it could be heterozygous for it. One way to tell if this is a butter is to breed it to a caramel or variant thereof. I don't recommend breeding it to a butter since some F-1 het. for caramel amelanistic corns can look like butters.

Bottom line. It's just not possible to tell you for sure what you have there. Except to say it's an amelanistic. That I'm sure of.

Good luck,

Don
www.cornsnake.NET
South Mountain Reptiles

Just for the sake better understanding of the genetics of this, what would produce an amel with that much yellow...Would it be a butter (amelXcaramel) bred/outcrossed with an amel.

The offspring would be high yellow amel het for caramel. If you bred it to a butter, which is amelXcaramel, would you not get all butters? Or would some offspring turn up as amels het caramels anyway (making it difficult to tell true butters from amel het caramels???) I am just confused I guess b/c I thought that caramel was a simple recessive mutation, aka..another form of anery (type c?).

Its not really frustrating as it is interesting. I am really interested in trying to figure out how this works. Butter genes are not like bloodreds, are they? If I think about this long enough, will my head explode?!?!?!?!

I think it is an awesome snake no matter what it is. It looks so similar to my 'butter' that its very hard to think that diff. genetics are at play. It may simply be that my 'butter' could have been sold to me as a 'butter' in error. Sh!t happens.

I emailed the breeder and am waiting for a reply, which may take a few days since its the busy breeding/shipping season. I'll let ya know what mine is for sure once it's hopefully confirmed. IF Don & the person you bought from said yours is an amel, then I would bet thats just what it is.

....got her from Phil Frost, if that helps any. Anyone know him or have his email? Thanks