Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just hatched out my first clutch of ball python eggs for this season. I bred my Sutherland line Axanthic male to one of my normal females that was purchased as a juvenile about 5 years ago. To my surprise, the baby on the left was one out of the clutch of seven eggs. The remaining six were all normal in appearence.
Regards,
John

Image

Don't know but you must call it YOUR LINE OF AXANTHICS!!!!!!

luck

Is your bat corked?

-----
RicK Denmon

Ball Boutique,Inc.

You've got to love it when that happens! Where did you get female from? I'm thinking you were very lucky on two counts. First to have a het female and second to have one that was compatable.

Congratulations once again!

MJ
Markus Jayne Ball Pythons

The female came from a breeder in Maryland named Mike Walsh.
I purchased 2.2 from him that were all unrelated. Mike had started to put together a group of animals for an Albino project but changed his mind and sold off the animals.

:

Close up head shot

John Skipper Reptiles

Congratulations and thanks for sharing.

Actually, I'm a little surprised we haven't seen more of this already. I did hear about someone in CA who reportedly produced an albino with a het to a pet store female some years back. I don't have the details and can't verify that story.

If a gene was randomly distributed at 1 in 100 would you consider it extremely rare or not? I'm not sure if mutant genes are really randomly distributed in the wild or not but if they where random, and a recessive gene occurred in 1 in 100 animals it would still not show up that much. That's because only 1 in 10,000 pairings would match up two of these 1 in 100 and since it's recessive only 1 in 40,000 of the babies would show it.

At one time I heard that Africa (Ghana, Togo, and Benin) exported about 150,000 wild bred baby balls a year. This may be a little high now days, I don't really know. At any rate, if a mutation was seen in 1 out of 40,000 they would get 3 or 4 of them a year. That might not be too far off for some of the more commonly imported morphs.

I guess my point is that I think some mutations may occur at rates as high as 1 in 100 in "normals". If you are using a het male, your odds of matching a compatible pair go up from the 1 in 10,000 in the wild to 1 in 100 (I’m assuming that this is a SK axanthic and not some new gene they both happened to be het for).

Given that there are a number of recessive genes, probably each occurring at relatively high rates, there is a good chance that in any sizable collection of "normals" there are some hidden hets. It's just a matter of pairing them with the right het or mutant male to expose the hidden genes.

So, here is an extra bonus to be had by outbreeding to normals. Just keep those gene carrier males rotated through your collection and who knows what you might find.

Thanks for telling us about this. It's always wonderful to hear about unexpected things like this happening.

Congratulations...that is a very pretty baby.

Lot of stories in the ball python world. You should know that by now!

support Martha - buy sheets
-----
RicK Denmon

Ball Boutique,Inc.

(what was that commnet all about?)

The fact that wild caught normal animals are producing shocking results. I know I would be happy and excited to get a morph when I purchase normals. Who wouldn't? Hope this clear things up for you.

The home of singing snakes
-----
RicK Denmon

Ball Boutique,Inc.

Congrats on this lucky pairing. You were very lucky. I have a nice little group of normals that I'm going to be working with, so who knows? lol The more I see the hatchling Axanthics, the more I like Axanthics. Although, adults I've seen on here seem to look a bit browned out or not so high contrast as with hatchlings. Is anyone working with a line, selectively breeding to produce animals that don't brown out? Or is it too early for this morph? Just curious I guess, because some pastel lines for example lose their bright colors and some don't. Anyways, I'm rambling now. Congrats again and I would hold onto that female.
-Cathy

Now take that good luck and run with it man!! That's a pretty sweet deal!

n/p

AWESOME man!

This is the kind of thing that always happens to someone else. Another lucky thing about this is I have over twenty adult normal female ball pythons that I could have bred to my axanthic male, I chose two of them, one of which produced the axanthic. I do consider myself very lucky and fortunate that it happened to me. I was not expecting to produce axanthics for a couple of more years. Thanks again and best of luck to everyone else this season.

John Skipper
John Skipper Reptiles