Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I had a group of Corns hatch out on Jan 23/24th. I didn't quite know what to expect because the mother's gentics are simply not known.
Father is a Ghost Het Amel. I can’t find his pictures at the moment. But he did sire these babies last year with an Anery Motley female. There were 2.3 hatchlings with that female. 1.0 Snow, 1.3 Anery and 0.0.1 Snow that died full term about a week prior to hatching.

Here is a picture of mom.

Here's a pic of them hatching after the first 4 hatchlings and eggs had been removed.

There were 16 eggs, 5 were slugs, 11 of 11 good eggs hatched. 2.9 hatchlings emerged after 6 weeks at 80 degrees F. There were 1.1 somewhat normal/dark hypo looking sibs, 1.6 Albinos and 0.2 oddballs.

Here's a picture taken after their first shed. I'm showing it to you this way on purpose so you can see some of the differences between the siblings and so I can differentiate which are which.

Here's a close-up picture of the ones in the foreground. I'm Calling these the "Frosted" Orange morph for now (just a name).

Here are the ones in the background. I'm calling these the Orange "Crush" morph for now (just a name).

In the two pics the "FO's" and the "OC's" dont appear that different but in person you see a big difference in the amount of orange that the "OC's" have on their sides. The color down their backs is also a very distinct Light Orange compared to the "FO's" that have more of a Burnt Orange tone to them. This my indicate that they may turn more red as they age.

Now for the midground siblings. These are the ones that I'm really questioning. There are two Normal(ish)/Dark Hypo siblings. The other two lighter ones I'm going to refer the as "Ultra Ruby" for now. These look like some type of Hypo Miami Phase except, they also apper to have the Ultra Gene. They have Ruby colored eyes like Ultras have. They may end up just being Ultra Hypos.

Here are a few more pics with the two types side by side.
"Frosted Orange" (left), "Ultra Ruby" (rigth)

"Ultra Ruby" (left), "Orange Crush" (right)

Please let me know what you think.

Thanks and enjoy.

Chris

>>I had a group of Corns hatch out on Jan 23/24th. I didn't quite know what to expect because the mother's gentics are simply not known.
>>Father is a Ghost Het Amel. I can’t find his pictures at the moment. But he did sire these babies last year with an Anery Motley female. There were 2.3 hatchlings with that female. 1.0 Snow, 1.3 Anery and 0.0.1 Snow that died full term about a week prior to hatching.
>>
>>
>>Here is a picture of mom.
>>
>>Here's a pic of them hatching after the first 4 hatchlings and eggs had been removed.
>>
>>There were 16 eggs, 5 were slugs, 11 of 11 good eggs hatched. 2.9 hatchlings emerged after 6 weeks at 80 degrees F. There were 1.1 somewhat normal/dark hypo looking sibs, 1.6 Albinos and 0.2 oddballs.
>>
>>

its kind of hard to tell but it looks to me like the mother was amel het hypo or possibly homo amel and hypo.

from the hatchlings it looks to me like you have normals, amels and hypos.
remember, there can bebig differemces within a morph, you can have four amels in a clutch that all look different. It doesn't mean they aren't all amels it just shows the diversity in the morp.
-----
Corn snakes and rat snakes..No one can have just one.
"Resistance is futile"
Jimmy Johnson
(Draybar)
Draybars Snakes

_____

>>>>
-----
Corn snakes and rat snakes..No one can have just one.
"Resistance is futile"
Jimmy Johnson
(Draybar)
Draybars Snakes

_____

I am not a morph nut so all I can say is they all look very nice
Foot Hill Reptiles

You're a good photographer, so see if you can shoot the eyes of your new babies. Snake-eye shooting separates the camera-toting men from boys. lol.

The snake (sire) you believe is a ghost could in fact be an ultramel anery. It would explain why you got all anery types when you bred it to an anery type last year. The ultra gene works like a recessive gene when paired with non albinos. The only recessive gene both dark snakes had in common last year was anery, so all the babies were phenotypic aneries. Keep in mind that the ULTRA gene is NOT a hypo gene. Yes, ultras and ultramels are hypo by loose definition (having greatly reduced melanin), but we reserve the tag HYPO for corns that are in possession of the recessive hypomelanistic gene. Hence, I'm on a mission to get people to stop attaching the word HYPO at the end of ultra or ultramel. It makes people think the ultra gene is allelic to hypo, which it's not. This mutation (ultra) resides on the albino locus. Hence, even though ultras and ultramels look hypo, they're an allele to albino (not hypo).

Okay, enough semantics and chit-chat. If you show us the eyes of your snakes and some have the classic pink pupils and some have the ruby pupils and some have normal black pupils, the indication will be that the sire is actually an ultramel anery. If he had been an ultra anery, all the babies would have been ultramels (ruby pupils); no amels. One thing that makes the identification of ultramels VS hypos difficult is that the results of the progeny of those two genes are very similar in appearance. You have enough babies there to determine which you have. If you see only pink pupils on the albinos and black pupils on the others, you likely have an amazingly beautiful line of hypos. NOTE: It is often interpreted that some hypos can have ruby pupils, but I have het to see proof that those animals are not ultramels. It could be that we have a line of recessive hypos out there that have ruby pupils, but I have not yet seen results of breeding trials that proved it. Many think that if a snake looks like a hypo A, it must be a hypo A. We all need to tighten our seat belts. This ride's gonna get krazy. It is not always going to be easy to distinguish between the look-alike mutations in corns.

BTW, I too have a line of ultramels that throw creamsicle looking corns. My non albinos that look like they're carriers of caramel actually are not. The albinos look like the ones you're showing here. Like creamsicles.

Show us close-ups of the eyes. Nice snakes : )

Don
South Mountain Reptiles

For starters, thanks for the complements. I didn't expect to hear from you in particular. I'm glad you took the time to reply. I'm actually a much better photographer than the pictures allow you to see. I have an old decrepid Sony Mavica, FD (Fixed Disk) 1.3 mp camera. Basically the second digital mavica sony put out about 10 years ago that saves pictures on a diskette. I tape a "plus 4" lens adaptor for a true 35mm SLR camera over the lens of the mavica, tape a piece of paper or kleenex over the flash so I don't completely wash out the subject becaus I'm so close, I manually focus the camera to it's closest focal point and then I adjust how close I am to the subject so I don't bugger up any of the fine adjustments I made to my million doallar set-up by trying to re-focus the camera. Then I hope to god I can hold still long enough not to move the camera and blurr the image. I can't wait til I get a new camera here in a couple of months. Anyway here are a few pics that I snapped for you to critique. On top of all that mess I also managed to take some one-handed images for you. Phewwww!!!

Probable Hypo for comparison

Probable Ultra (Amel draped over the top)

Comparison shot 1 - Probable Ultra over Probable Hypo

Comparison shot 2 - Probable Ultra over Amel

Comparison shot 3 - Amel over Probable Ultra

Let me know what your verdict is. I have a pair of Ultra Ambers I picked up from Mike Falcon. It would be nice to have a few more Ultra's to work with.
Unfortunately, I lost the male Ghost the same day the babies were hatching out. He had been having problems keeping his food down for several months and I just couldn't get him turned around. He had been that way almost from the start. I think the place I got him from last year may have dumped him because of that. He was a very eager breeder with the two females he bred with last year. He really didn't show any signs of being an Ultra that I could tell but I never really looked that close (I have him in the freezer if I need to double check if you can even see that once they have been froozen). If he carried the Ultra Gene, I hope he passed it on to one of his Anery on Normal offspring. He only produced 1 Anery Male, 1 Pos Hypo Male, 1 Snow Male and one Amel Male. I do have the VMS Cornsnake morph/genetics guide.

Thanks

Chris

There is definitely an ultramel look in those animals. Keep in mind that they're not ultras, and this means your breeder is not a full ultra. Yes, they are actually in possession of the ultra gene, but they are the het version which is called ultramel (ultra amel). All babies would have been ultramels if the breeder was in fact, ultra. There would have been no amels.

Okay, that outta the way, we must speak about your incubation. Please, tell me that the shape of the heads in your pix are because you were constraining them for the pix. lol. I ask because at 80F, your snakes should have hatched in 60-66 days. If you really did get them out of the eggs in six weeks, your thermometer is busted. To speed incubation like that, your snakes would have been cooking at 88F . If that were the case, deformities could have resulted. If you're not squeezing the necks/heads of those snakes for the pic (no harm in that), your snakes have deformed heads. It appears that the shape of the heads is because of constrainment for photography. ???

Don
South Mountain Reptiles

Don,
The deformation in the heads you are seeing is due to the way I had to restrain these guys while I was trying to photograph them. You just can't hold two of these guys still like I was doing with one hand and hold the camera and take the pictures with the other hand and not apply more pressure than you would really prefer to apply. They wanted to twist around in my hand and turn their heads in opposite directions at the same time when I wasn't applying at least a little pressure. No harm done though.

As far as the incubator goes, I think the temps are correct. I didn't double check them with my digital temp probe this time though so the temp inside the egg chamber may have been a little warmer than inside the incubator where the thermometer was. I used a Styrofoam Hovebator incubator to hatch the last two clutches of eggs and they both came out between six and seven weeks. I have used this in the past to incubate Standings Day Geckos which all seemed to hatch in about 45 days (also a bit early) but with no deformities and about equal sexes hatching out. I also used it for tons of baby Leopard Geckos two years ago without any problems. As far as the egg chamber goes, maybe the Hatch-Rite and Sphagnum Moss held the clutch temps up a bit higher than the thermometer actually read or maybe my unit is just getting old. Keep in mind that I did get a higher female ratio in each of the two clutches which also would suggest high incubation temps. I could also believe that this female may have held her eggs a little longer like the Anery Motley female did. I would definitely throw that out there as a big possibility since I didn't have an egg box in the enclosure with her early enough. So if that is the case then it puts incubation at 7 weeks plus which is a bit more believable. I definitely could believe the higher temp theory since I did have one with what I would consider as a major deformity (half way down the back the spine dips down slightly, then back up and then twists to the side at about 30 degrees from the vertical plane).

I'm glad you took the time to reply to this post. I have enjoyed the discussions and I'm glad to hear you think there may be some ultra in there somewhere. That just means I will probably hold back most of the clutch for a few breeding trials. Besides, I would really like to know what the Orange Amel morphs are going to look like. That is unless the rest of my projects really take off. With all of the Boa and Python morphs I'm working I could easily have over 200 babies next season. I told myself not to get started with the corns. Too late for that, I already have 17 corn/milk morphs not including the babies that I hatched out in the last two clutches. I could be up to my armpits in baby snakes next year. OHHH WELL.... I enjoy it.

Thanks for your time and I look forward to more discussion with you in the future.

Chris

I can't help you at all identify the sanke, but I have a snake so similar to your mom snake. But absolutly no white in the rings.

The babys are great looking snakes and so early? Congrats.

We get so many corns/rats I ahve no idea what to call. I just sold 2 "gray somethings" I think the male was a ghost and the feamle was a amel. But I have 2 more and not 1 of them are a like. Light black ring, no black around dark gray saddles, to super dark sadlles with and without black rings. Not even corn snake breeders could agree. Emory, gray rat, anery, ghost, so on and so on.

The anery look just not sell for us, I sold the 2 for $150. Nice breeding stock I guess. But don't ya know another gray something or other came in the next day. R R R R R R R R RR R R R R

I gave up on even trying. It's just impossible, and like don said, "the ride" is going to be crazy.
Soon, my name for them will be possible corns as the hybrids will start to slide in too.
-----
Thanks for reading.
Big Tom

www.HerpZillA.com