Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Here are a few pics of last years hatchlings and a sub adult female i am raising up.

For those of you that who do not know the story behind the albino annulata I will share with you how we came to produce them. I produced the first albinos back in 2001 from a pair of normal looking siblings.
I got these "Normals" as hatchlings from a good friend William "Bill" Cobb who hatched them out from a pair of WC Locality Annulata from the Freer, Texas area. Bill said I should get the hatchlings because they were nice tangerines from a known locality so I bought one pair in 1999. I bred this pair together in 2001 and they produced a clutch of 6 eggs, and two albinos hatched. After acquiring Bill's WC adults I raised up an albino male and bred him back to his Grandma, she laid eggs in 2004 and albinos hatched out in the clutch, proving her to be a WC animal that was het. for albino.

So this is how the albinos came to be, pretty neat as these were the first milksnakes I produced.

Cheers,

Susan Hardy

Here is a thin yellow banded albino annulata.

She is a nice tangerine I hope to bred next yr.

Susan Hardy

All are very nice, love the variation
Tom Stevens
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TomsSnakes.com

What are the odds of this happening? I bought the WC adults from a pet shop in El Paso in 1998. The pet shop folks told me the adults were collected together under an old refrigerator near Freer. They were super annulata with deep red and tangerine bands. They were big stocky animals that had big babies that ate pinks with no problems. I had them 3 years and they produced each year, so there should be some more hets floating around somewhere. If I remember correctly, Susan picked two out of a clutch of five that were 50% hets, and got hets. I guess Freer will be popular this spring!
Bill Cobb

Susan, do you play the Lotto?

The odds must be a zillion to one that you'd select just 2 animals and have the 2 carrying the albino gene - and be your very first milk breeding project - incredible luck!
Thay're superb looking animals Carla and thanks very much for the refresher and pics.
You too Bill, thanx.
Jeff

not Carla.
But snarla Carla is pretty catchy.
Jeff

I think I can so this math. If only one of the parents was a het., then the chance that one of the offspring is a het. is 50/50 or 1/2. So the chance of picking two hets is (1/2)*(1/2), or 1 in 4 (25%). Thats not so bad, but collecting a het from the wild? Now that is so big number!

Vinny
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“There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone on cycling according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” -C. Darwin, 1859

Natural Selection Reptiles

"but collecting a het from the wild? Now that is some big number!"

Not only is that a big number, how would it be calculated? What factors would be considered, and how would these factors be measured? To date, this is one known het out of ALL the annulata ever collected!

Then if you have a het, how are you going to know? I had the het female for three years and never had a clue! From this expereince, I make it a point to inbreed some of the offspring and/or back breed to the parents. Yes, I know this is not generally accepted procedure nor politically correct, but I think the reason is clear. I rarely get what might be a bad mutation or deformaty. When I do, it is in the freezer, no questions asked.

Bill Cobb

"but collecting a het from the wild? Now that is some big number!"

"Not only is that a big number, how would it be calculated? What factors would be considered, and how would these factors be measured? To date, this is one known het out of ALL the annulata ever collected! "

You could figure out the probability, but would need a lot of data we will never get. For example, if you collected say a 1000 animals from the place where the het. was collected and then were able to DNA test them to find out which were hets you would get #hets/1000 = prob. of collecting one.

But like you said, you would never know if collected a het. unless you did the backcross. I think I'll be backcrossing all my animals, just to see

Vinny
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“There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone on cycling according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” -C. Darwin, 1859

Natural Selection Reptiles

I wasn't aware you would be able to find out if something is heterozygous for a trait based off DNA..
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Mike
KingPin Reptiles Inc.
www.kingpinreptiles.com

Sure. Heterzygous is referring to having two different alleles at the same gene; if you sequence the gene from a homoZ you could only get one uique sequence (say, ATG) but if you sequence it from a heteroZ then you get two different sequences (say ATG and ACG). In the albino example, you would probably sequence the tyrosinase gene in a normal and then in a albino to get the sequence of the two different alleles. Then, if you sequence the possible hets you would get only the functional (normal) copy from the HomoZ but both the normal and the mutatnt copies from the hets.

But thats all assuming you have a lot of time and money to set up the tests. Its really not practical to do in snakes (yet).

Hope that made some sense,
Vinny
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“There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone on cycling according to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” -C. Darwin, 1859

Natural Selection Reptiles

1 in 30,000 for an albino robin......

snakes I never saw a number in print

........I usually just use the 30,000....and noone can collect that many........or own that many, not even Shannon....(he tried).....

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so is the anulata amel pure anulata???......
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..........I love how people email you and say
"I'm not trying to start a fight"......
........isn't that like the guarantee that they want fighting feedback???

anyways.................makes me smile???...LOL
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I would say it is....

At least the origin of the line isn't really questionable. Everything can be traced back to somewhere.
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Mike
KingPin Reptiles Inc.
www.kingpinreptiles.com

Susan,

Those are very nice. You sure did win the lottery with the hatchlings you acquired! I'm looking forward to pinner and spotted albino annulata some day.

Thanks for sharing.

Dave
DNS Reptiles