10 years ago today, me, my younger brother and 2 other friends were coming home from a party when my brother lost control of the vehicle and hit a guard rail. We bounced around on the bridge and eventually came to a stop. When I came to, my femur had been split in two and I was told that my brother had passed away. The jaws of life were used on the vehicle and it was said that the speedometer was stuck at 75. Drinking was involved. I have not been able to get behind the streering wheel since that day. Some growing up on my part had to be done. October 27th has been painful ever since. Today, I am hoping to change that.
In March of 2009, I put an ad on craigslist offering a home for unwanted reptiles. A professor at a local university offered me 3 boas and 1 ball python. I jumped at the opportunity. The largest was a 1994 male boa constrictor. He was bred once to a female, who had passed away, but they kept one of his daughters. She was just a little smaller than he was. She was born in 1998. They had no intentions of breeding them and kept them as display animals at the university.
I was assisting a python breeder with cage cleaning duties at that time here in the Oklahoma City area. I had intentions of moving to Thailand shortly after that time to try out a few of the farms there. One of my friends from Hawaii was originally from Bangkok and had mentioned that some of his classmates worked for a croc farm there and he could possibly get me in. The thing was, I have never bred snakes before and now that i had two snakes that were breeding size, I wanted to try it. They were completely normal looking and I knew that at most, I would just get a few normal babies. I could sell the babies to the breeder I worked for and head over to Thailand.
So, even though they were related, I thought I would try it out.
I put them together and the male went right to it. Many pictures were taken of their first pairing. I had even taken some short video of it. Months went by and I kept my camera with an extra set of charged batteries on the cage. I wanted to hopefully get footage of her giving birth to show some of my friends back in Hawaii. She gave birth to two deceased babies roughly around March of 2010. A couple weeks went by. Shortly after that, I was just hoping for atleast 1 good baby. Just something, anything, after all that work.
Then one day, while playing video games with the lights off, I walked over to her cage and noticed she had some babies lying in a little pool of goo. I quickly turned on every light in the house and grabbed my camera in one hand and a desk lamp with the other. I started filming the event and noticed that one of the babies were striped. Almost completely striped. (The video is on youtube under kekoasboas.)
After seeing the babies, I realized that the Thailand move was now going to be cancelled.
As time went by, I noticed that the babies had some pattern differences along with some nice coloring. Most of the babies came out a orange, pink or red color. The striped girl was first pink, then after her first shed, turned orange, after the next shed she turned back to pink and after that shed and every shed since, she has stayed orange with a bright orange belly.
Now the difficult part came, proving it out. The parents were bred in 2011 with no results. They were bred again in the end of 2011 with not many expectations. Its funny how boa breeding goes. Then, a few months ago, I had completely given up on it, when in her cage was a litter of boas. I reached for my camera again and filmed most of it.
This time however, no completely striped babies like the first time. What I did notice was many of the babies do carry the same characteristics of the first litter. They have the same color differences as the first generation, but most of these babies have more pattern connections and chain linking. Some of the babies also have somewhat of a reddish/orange head which fades as they grow. There were several slugs and still borns. I sometimes wonder if any of them were completely striped???
Currently, the striped form has not been proven genetic. I do believe that this may be co-dominant.
The name "Hawaiian Punch" has been chosen for many reasons. The main reason is becuase I am from the island of Hawaii, the Big Island. And as you may know, Hawaii is one of the only places in the world without snakes. Another reason for the name is because they are orange, red and pink, just like Hawaiian punch. There are a couple other reasons, but I'll leave those off here. When the striped form is proven genetic, it will be called the KB stripe. I hope to breed her to one of her brightly colored siblings soon.
I will be taking pictures of some of the babies today and posting as time permits.
Well, thank you for reading this and feel free to check out some of the videos on youtube...kekoasboas. There is also a website, but the facebook is used more...Kekoa's Boas. It is probably the easiest way to contact me.
Once again, Thank you!
