Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Okay, this may be a silly question. I haven't ever bred any corns, so maybe I'm an airhead since I haven't ever thought about this question. So, what happens if some herper, who is not keeping breeding records, crosses two corns with traits that haven't been crossed before and decides to sell them? Would they just sell them as mutts??? If every herper out there was doing this, wouldn't there be infinitely many unknown strains of corns out there? What happens to these snakes? Thank you for your reply.
-----
***** Brandon *****

0.0.1 White's Tree Frog
1.0 Creamsicle Cornsnake
corn_snake_dude@yahoo.com

Okay, this may be a silly question. I haven't ever bred any corns, so maybe I'm an airhead since I haven't ever thought about this question. So, what happens if some herper, who is not keeping breeding records, crosses two corns with traits that haven't been crossed before and decides to sell them? Would they just sell them as mutts??? If every herper out there was doing this, wouldn't there be infinitely many unknown strains of corns out there? What happens to these snakes? Thank you for your reply.
----------------------------
Eventually, the traits would either be identified (most likely) or they would be considered new. Depends on if we are talking about a new single recessive trait or a combination of existing traits. If we are talking about a combination of existing traits, eventually some of these new corns will leak out into the general public, we'll do a few test breeding trial with some of our own stocks and see if we are talking about the same recessive gene. For example, someone, somewhere combines motley, bloodred, lavender and the babies hatch out and are totally wild looking. Well, when a few of these babies hit the market, I would buy one and breed it to a mate that is het for multiple things, like a motley het hypo het lav. Well, when I breed those two together, I immediatley know the 'new' morph is comprised of motley and lav because i would hatch a combination of motley and lav babies, so on and so forth.

If you mean a new recessive trait is cultivated and marketed by a single person, then they essentially founded this new morph. Lets say I breed two wildcaught corns and got green babies, I would call them 'emerald corns' and market them as such and it would go down in the books just like all the previous morphs (lav, blood, amel, anery, caramel...) did.

I am rambling, but essentially, records only simplfy the deciphering process of a corns recessive genetic makeup. Even with out records, I think with all the corn breeders these day, we will either find the new combination of existing genes or prove a new recessive gene of a 'new' morph. Techinically, there ARE an infinite number of different morphs (or at least so so so many that it would be near impossible to sum up), it just takes multiple breeding trails for the animal to exhibit the new mutation in color and/or pattern phenotypically.

whew...

Wes Spinks

-----
"Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that's how dogs spend their lives."--Sue Murphy

WES SPINKS
E-Mail Me
Spinks Snake Site

Thank you Wes, for your reply. This next question is to anyone who would care to reply. Okay, I know that this next question is probably a basic and dumb question. So, can you take two offspring from the same clutch and breed them together? Would this result in problems? For example- as suggested in the previous message in this thread- if someone were to come up with an emerald corn. Say that in the clutch of eggs from the 2 het for emerald parents, there are at least 2 emerald corns- one male, and one female. Could you then take them and breed them together to get a clutch of emerald corns, or would you have to go through the long process of breeding an emerald to a normal in order to produce hets, and then breed 2 hets from 2 different clutches in order to produce more emerald babies? Thanks.
-----
***** Brandon *****

0.0.1 White's Tree Frog
1.0 Creamsicle Cornsnake
corn_snake_dude@yahoo.com

you can breed siblings together. It's not recommended to do that for numerous generations, as deleterious recessives will start to pile up.

If I had those hypothetical Emerald corns pop up from one of my breedings, I would keep every baby from the clutch. I would probably breed the female normals back to the papa and also to the Emerald Male Baby (assuming that he's a boy) and the momma snake I would try to breed to the boy as soon as he had enough size on him. I'd keep copious notes, and then make a zillion dollars.
-----
~Sasheena

If anyone today was lucky enough to have a shocker like that happen, I would hope they kept all the babies, and tried to reproduce it. That's how they all get discovered, and I doubt the snakes care about your notes, but if you want to be able to prove it's "your" creation, you'd need good documentation of the blood-lines. And then.... make a zillion dollars
-----
Dianne
AKA IcedGoddess
1.2 Cornsnakes
1.3 Cats
1.0 Pionus parrot
0.1 Child
IcedGoddess Creations
Castle Serpents

What does that mean?
-----
***** Brandon *****

0.0.1 White's Tree Frog
1.0 Creamsicle Cornsnake
corn_snake_dude@yahoo.com

Right now I have some mice with a mutation... it causes their to grow out the sides of their heads instead of near the top... people who like pet mice like this look, and I could make some serious bucks by selling them. Problem is that it is a recessive mutation that causes the facial bones to be all twisted up. It's a deleterious recessive... it is not a good gene for survival. My first three mice with this deformation died by six weeks. One bred with a few girls before dying. They all went blind fairly early, because the twisted up facial bones affected their eye sockets. I don't think they could hear either. But they ARE cute. So I'm going to breed some of the babies together to see if I can get more like them... then I'll try to breed out the extreme lethal parts of the gene and have a kinder gentler floppy eared mouse.

Bug eyed leucisistic ratsnakes is another deleterious recessive. A gene that causes something you don't want to happen.
-----
~Sasheena

raise up a bunch of totally unrelated, healthy wild caught females and breed them with the emerald male. That way you could both inbreed with siblings and parents (to "fix" the trait as quickly as possible)as well as outcross at the same time. Then the next generation from that emerald male x wild females will only be 1/2 related. That is the first thing I do when I acquire a relatively new (and expensive) trait. Usually they are fairly inbred at first, because everyone wants to produce the "real thing" while it is new and exciting. Thus many breeders do a lot of inbreeding at first. I do too, but in addtion, I start a line of outcrossed ones. THOSE outcrossed hets are the ones I mostly keep back for my own future breeders. Most beginners don't consider the value of those and prefer the more inbred ones because they actually show the desired trait - people often don't have the patience for long term projects.

However, all of the above generally only applies to new and rare morphs. If you buy the "old" types from a serious breeder, you shouldn't have to worry much about inbreeding.

Good luck!

you wouldn't believe the het "mutts" out there......from pet shops............

.........really.........

triple...quadruple........lav,amel,ghost,hypo,caramel,butter,opal,het everythings..........

around here......(Pa)....noone wants hets for anything usually......so they get dumped alot for like $10 to the pet shops.......(used to be $5 even).......

..........yep...........

........hets......if you want them...alot of breeders do have multiple types of every kind of crosses......

other breeders you would have to atually ask for them......

..........

have fun.........

.......going to a pet shop this summer?.....LOL