Dan,
Thanks for the kind words. I guess this was just my year to get lucky. Hopefully the great majority of the eggs make it through the 100 day incubation period to hatching.
You're absolutely right though on the YTs. I don't think the general herping public has had much exposure to truly nice ones, since the majority seen over the years have been WC animals of varying quality and questionable temperament.
I've always been a color guy, with yellow being my favorite color in a herp, followed by red. Although you do see quite a bit of color variation in Easterns, I think the YTs possess the widest range of color over the greatest percentage of the animal's body of any of the Drys.
Temperament is also very important. With rare exceptions, I don't keep animals that are aggressive. As a collector, one of my great joys is to be able to pull an animal out of its cage, and let it play through your hands in good lighting where you can enjoy the animal's beauty in a relaxed manner.
We all expect to see nice yellow posteriors in the YTs, but it gets really exciting when the yellow is expressed further up the body, sometimes including portions of the head. Through selective breeding of quality animals, I think the day will come when YTs with solid yellow heads and mostly yellow forebodies will be produced. The goal should not be to simply crank out a bunch of offspring just so we can say we bred them, but to produce animals that delight and inspire anyone who sees them.
As you said, the next several years should be exciting times for all of us Dry keepers and collectors.
Brian
