Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This has to be the number one question asked to me in email...
I would love to share MY OPINION and let others chime in with there own results and thoughts...
Hypo Motleys...
The hypo Motley gene is a confusing one, much like the paradigm and the Blizzard project. The hypo and the motley gene are located on the same locus within a Chromosome. Just like the paradigm and the (blizzard) kahl albino and type 2 anery. It is very confusing and there is still a ton of grey area... I have had many chats with Tracy Barker among many others trying to figure out excatly what is happening and no one knows for sure. I have done a lot of genetics work and this one still gets me. We have bred hypo motley to normal over 15 times and never had anything except Hypos and Motleys. Same thing I have bred hypo motley jungle to normal and produced salmons, salmon jungles, motleys and motley jungles. Strange and interesting... And this is a very large sample size... To confuse matters YOU CAN PRODUCE NORMALS... OR EVEN A HYPO MOTLEY CAN POP FROM A HYPO MOTLEY TO A NORMAL... This is true and has happend a small number of times. All of those animals were born with health problems kinks etc and died soon after birth or were still borns (that I am aware of).... Why??? Who knows. With some of these fluke animals Tracy believed a third Chromosome dropped which would explain why these flukes don't normally survive. Prime example the red Devil... Should not happen but did and of course was also a stillborn.
??? Or if they live they tend to have issues and short lives. When chromosomes are added or taken away by chance the result is not good for the offspring.
We also have discovered the blizzard project to have a similar result. You breed a kahl strain albino to a type two anery and the results are DH Anery2/ Albino... If you breed DH to DH... You should produce Albinos, Type 2 Anerys and Blizzards... Just like you do with type1 Anery snows. But this is not the case. Again these genes fall on the same locus within the chromosome.
So instead we get albinos, anery2 and pos DH's from a DH pairing...
Next we move to the Paradigm... Boawoman caramel bred to a Sharp Albino... BAM... We have DH BOAWOMAN CARAMEL/ SHARPS... And to top it off they are visual DH creating a new morph (paradigm) that is in fact just a het caramel het sharp... I LOVE BOA GENETICS...
We then take a Paradigm and breed it to a normal and get all normals... But each normal is only het for one or the other... But you take a paradigm to a sharp and you get paradigms and sharps.. COOL STUFF... Ball pythons may have more genes then boas, but they sure aren't as interesting. LOL...
We have only scratched the surface of what is to come. I am glad we have a community of people that all share a common love for these snakes. We can share our truimphs and failures and learn from one another.

UNITE OR DIE... WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT INDIVIDUALS BUT OUR PASSION FOR BOAS UNITES US TOGETHER...
Best of luck to everone this season...

Josh Ketchum
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Josh Ketchum
Sunshine Boas

Hey Josh, That's interesting to hear that normals and Hypo Motleys occasionally pop out from Hypo Motley x normal breedings. Out of curiosity, were the unexpected Hypo Motleys born from Hypo Motley mothers, and the unexpected normals born from normal mothers?

It seems like a lot of Motley litters have one or two unexpected babies born along side an otherwise textbook litter, or maybe it's just the multiple bold genes involved in general that make it easy to tell when something doesn't belong. If the unexpected babies are partho babies it could explain why you got Hypo Motleys unexpectedly. For example, if an Albino gives partho birth, it can only have Albino babies, since the mother is Homozygous Albino. Since Hypo and Motley are allelic, a Hypo Motley is essentially a homozygous morph. I wonder if partho babies from a Hypo Motley mother could only be Hypo Motleys, or if you would get Super Hypos and Super Motleys, or all three?

Have you ever had a normal born from a Hypo Motley mother? That would be crazy! I didn't know about the Blizzard issue. I've heard that the Double Homozygous was eluding breeders, but never heard anything more than that. Weird stuff!

Kyle,
I am just on my way out the door and will reply a bit later.
One interesting thought though on the bizzard project...
It has been at least 20 litters between us and others...
We all know there are several strains of central type 2 anerys.
It would be an interesting project for someone to try with another strain. Our female was a mexican type 2... Her name was Black Magic and she was such a beautiful boa... The best type 2 I have ever seen. And to my knowledge all Blizzard line animals come from this founding female...
Last year we bred one of our DH Blizz females to a black tail Type 2 Nicaraguan and... ALL NORMALS...
I will get to your other questions later... Got to run...
I think we will do a huge blog on these genes on Jeremy's site... We have been meaning to write it all up and I think it is time...

Josh

I bred a male moonglow to a female motley in 2008 and produced one moonglow, where the mother motley was not het anery and was not het albino.

I think it is too easy to always assume that the genes are on the same locus. What about the possibilty that the blizzard or some of these other animals are lethal genetic combinations that die early and don't develop. Jeremy produced the red devil and I saw animals that looked very similar that Frank Martin produced that only lasted about a day. What if these are the few with these genetic combinations that actually make it to term. This definitely happens in humans where some lethal mutations are almost always die early in gestation but do rarely make it to term. I think this is something to consider for a reason why some of these animals are not produced.

Regarding the blizzard Jeremy stated in the past that both he and Pete produced still born blizzards and that he had one in his freezer. I think that has to be part of the blizzard discussion. How do you think those blizzards where produced if they share the same locus?

Bill

Bill,
Those are some great points... And yes we did believe that we produced a stillborn blizz. But it was premature and not full term. Could have just been a albino that had not developed color...
It is really hard to say what is going on for sure...

Again some great points...

Josh
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Josh Ketchum
Sunshine Boas

Sounds to me like a couple of cases of linkage in there.

I'm guessing that the two type 2 anerys are actually a type 2 anery and a type 3 anery.

Paul Hollander
wikipedia -- genetic linkage