Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi all,

Just came across this pretty girl and had to have her, milks are a new direction for me so I want to see what you all think. Her first few bands are somewhat crazy one goes diagonal, and two don't go all the way around, one of which has no black band around it. Also, she has three vertical white pinstripes between her head and the beginning of her bands, one on each side and one along her spine....is that unusual?

The rest of her black bands aren't quite as faint as most of the VP morphs I have seen, but they seem different from other tricolors. They are wider along her spine, and taper sharply. Most disappear on her side, at varying lengths from her belly.

When I saw her, I couldn't help but think that she had some interesting potential for breeding. What are your thoughts? She was sold as simply a tricolor hypo, but there must be some other known morphs in there. What do you think I should pick up to mate her with?

That's the best I could do getting a good shot of her markings, because she's a 40 gram milk snake and doesn't know what sit still means yet.

From snakes

Well,.....their patterns can and do vary dramatically depending on their genetic backgrounds. That is an EXCELLENT looking, very "clean" hypo tricolor. Many of them can have fairly thick darker outer triad rings, while others can have much narrower (pin-banded) and/or "vanished" rings. Even though your snakes rings might not go completely around at the bottom, I wouldn't quite call it a "vanished" patterned animal. In my opinion it would have to be a bit more pronounced to be termed a VP. That is one gorgeous snake though in my opinion!

Here are just a few more vanished types........

slightly vanished ghost

one with a similar slightly vanished affect pattern to yours down the sides.

A VERY vanished amel......

a VP pinner.....

a bicolored amel with thicker rings with some not quite being complete towards the ventral area.....

an extreme hypo with relatively thick silver/platinum rings....

A pin-banded extreme with some slightly vanished sides....

another nice pinner......

a wider ringed female with accentuating orange rings.....

A hypo from a killer ghost x extreme with some vanishing in the upper half of his body.....

a KILLER pin-banded extreme hypo.......

and lastly, a SMOKER looking vanished amel Hondo!.....

cheers, ~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Doug, I would call those all VP in my book. Very Pretty that is. LOL. Nice array of hondos bro. Thanks for sharing!

Joe

Thanks Joe!.........my pleasure man..

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Wow, thank you so much for all those pictures and descriptions. How would you suggest I pair her up when she is ready to breed, should I just go for a pure hypo tri or put her with something interesting and see what pops out?

Any thoughts on the three vert white stripes by her head?

Well, since you didn't mention anything about the snake being a heterozygous recessive gene carrier (het) for any other traits, it would be a shot in the dark for producing anything other than hypos. But it is very common now days for many snakes out there to be unknown hets of different mutations. If you bred her to something like a ghost (hypo x anerythristic), or a ghost het amel, or a amel het anery/hypo (ghost), and yours turned out to be het for any other traits, you could potentially produce some other morphs if yours proved-out a het for any of these other mutations. Nothing wrong with producing just nice hypos though..LOL!. It's really a personal preference I guess.

If you mean the light areas in the first RBR(red body ring) towards the neck, that is fairly uncommon, but not really unheard of, and is probably nothing to get real worked up over thinking it will likely produce any crazy pattern morphs, etc.., but you never really know. It's definitely interesting. I have seen quite a few animals with weird patches on them never produce any others like them. But if you back-bred two babies together FROM that parent snake, that is the best way for you having the best chance of any others with any anomalies similar to that or far better,...just no telling with stuff like that most of the time.

Anyway, best of luck with that, that is a very pretty and clean tricolor hypo. All of them "dirty-up" some as they mature, but that one is exceptionally clean, so it will end up cleaner than many too.

~Doug

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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Wow, Doug! Quite the Hondo show, buddy! Man, do you have a nice group of BRIGHT snakes!
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-Cole

Yeah, those were a few of the more vanished/pinner types for comparing with typical wider ringed individuals.

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com