Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I got these from a Gold Dust X Gold Dust breeding. Just wondering if they would be considered Ambers or Gold Dust?

Female
She is very hard to photograph...especially with my crappy camera. She is very light with nice bright yellows

Male

Thanks
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Scott
"The most powerful person never has to use it"

From gold dust to gold dust... Its eithier a gold dust or an ultra caramel..!

I thought gold dust was an ultra caramel or ultra/amel carmel and both versions are disernable, so amber (or hypo caramel) isn't even part of the equation. But if both parents had one copy ultra and one copy amel (ultra/amel) then potentially you could produce both gold dust and butters from that breeding. And the difference is that the gold dust would have a bit of black (melanin) still showing, which I would say photo #1 shows, but photo #2 is a bit more iffy but still leaning on gold dust, my butter doesn't have any dark border what so ever.
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Jeff Benfer
gartersnakemorph.com

I know that the genetics can get quite confusing....i have talk ed to several breeders including Love...I am having a hard time wrapping my head around what they are or what they could produce....Although I will defaintly look forward to it in 2 more years

The female is much brighter than the male...so that lead me to lean more towards Gold Dust...where he is a caramel or amber....I am way to visiual and need pictures of all to really be able to figure it out.....any one care to share
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Scott
"The most powerful person never has to use it"

If these were sold to you by someone who knows what they are doing genetically, and they were in fact from a genetic gold dust x gold dust breeding, then two types of offspring are possible butters and gold dust, they are definately not butters because they do not have pink eyes and more whitish borders, which means they are gold dust. It's when people "call" morphs based on appearance rather than what the genetics are, that is where it gets fuzzy, so if one or both of the parents were actually a hypo caramel (amber) but were called gold dust because they had low black borders just to inflate the value, these 2 snakes in question can be proven out with the right subsequent breedings either way. If you bought them from someone reputable that knows genetics, then the parents are both gold dust and both of your snakes are gold dust, but perhaps the one with the darker borders is two copies of ultra and the lighter snake has one copy ultra and one copy amel, which could be proven or disproven beyond a shadow of a doubt with subsequent breedings.
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Jeff Benfer
gartersnakemorph.com

Thank you for the explaination...I bought the pair for $45 from a breeder that is repectable..although there was some confusion on what they were....It was a gold dust pairing and these were the offspring...Hewas calling them ultra ambers instead of gold dust though....but he wasnt defainte on that answer as well....so I am fine with that....I know they are not butters.....becasue of the eye color....but ia m going to fatten these guys u and get them ready to prove out what they are or are not.....the male also is showing some motley as well....so it should be interesting.

Thanks again to all
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Scott
"The most powerful person never has to use it"

Well if the guy you bought them from was calling them ultra ambers then maybe they do have hypo gene possibilities, which would not be surprising based on eye color and appearance alone, who knows at this point maybe only God knows what the genotype is, hopefully you will be able to prove out the genotypes, best of luck with them.
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Jeff Benfer
gartersnakemorph.com

Although her yellows don't seem to come out well in the pic, I'd say Gold Dust.
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Brad Chambers
WWW.HCU-TX.ORG

The Avalanche has already started-it is too late for the pebbles to vote....

I would like to clarify some of the terminology from this post. The genetic make up for butters is homozygous amel and caramel and are easy to tell apart from golddust and ultra caramel babies. The genetic makeup of golddust is an amel and an ultra gene(ultramel), plus homozygous caramel, and the ultra caramels(mistakingly called ultra ambers sometimes) are homozygous ultra and caramel. Ambers, which should not be mentioned in this post, are homozygous hypo A and caramel.

If both adults were golddust(ultramel caramel), then both adult snakes have both an amel gene and the ultra gene. When you breed a pair of goldust together, you can get 3 possible outcomes, not 2. You can hatch butters(amel caramel), golddust(ultramel caramel), and ultra caramels (some people do mistakingly call these ultra ambers).
The 2 snakes pictured are either goldust or ultra caramels, and it is impossible to tell for sure which one. They are not butters.

But it is easy to understand why he said they may be golddust, but he thought they were ultra ambers..........he was not confused, it is just that a person cannot tell them apart......(but he is very wrong in using the term ultra ambers, he should correctly call them ultra caramels).
An ultra amber implies 3 sets of recessive genes, ie, caramel, hypo and ultra. An ultra caramel, which these babies might be, would be a double recessive, caramel and ultra, and is the correct term.

In my experience of hatching out well over a 100 baby golddust motleys and more recently ultra caramel motleys, I believe you can make a good guess on which ones are which, but ultimately, you have to breed them to determine which ones are ultra or ultramel, as they look so much alike.
And I do have proven ultra caramel motleys that have melanin, just like the golddust motleys, so that does not work for determining which is which with this group.

We really need a name for an ultra caramel. We have ambers(hypo A and caramel), topaz(lava and caramel), then sunkissed caramel(no name), ultra caramel (no name), and some day dilute and caramel.

Bottom line, we need to be careful/specific with our names, ......golddust cannot mean both ultramel caramel and ultra caramel, that won't work. Brad Lichtenhan

Thank you for you post....I am trying to wrapmy head around the whole genetics of these guys....I will say i do know what a butter looks like and I have never thought that they were.....Its the ulta caramel, Gold Dust, Ultra amber thing thati was confused about.....but it is most cleared up.....i do know that it is going to be an interesting pairing

Here are some more pics from a couple month back

Thank you to all

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Scott
"The most powerful person never has to use it"

Brad mentioned..

"and some day dilute and caramel"

They already exist Brad... I believe Susan produce those a few years back!

I am frequently behind. But a couple years behind?? that is just embarrassing.
I could not find a good pic, but I did find evidence that they do, indeed, exist, thanks, Brad

The snake below is not dilute, and unrelated to the post. Just cool looking, in my opinion.

Don't feel to bad Brad.. I will be playing catchup for many years to come.. In fact, I doubt I will ever be the first at anything, regardless of what I bred...

Regards... Tim of T and J