Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've three cali kings in my collection, which I am planning to breed next year. I just had a thought about genetics and wondered if anyone knows if the albino and lavender albino stains are compatible, or if they will breed to produce heterozygous offspring. Any help would be much appreciate. Thanks,

Paul.

Paul, they are two different genes. If you breed an albino to a lavender you will get normal looking cal kings that are double hets.

Kerby...

Has anyone produced double albino cal kings yet? I havent seen them available for some odd reason.

I'm sure they have been produced. Both lavenders and albinos have been around for awhile. I produced my own double-hets (albino/lavender) this year, so I will be able to tell you what an albino-lavender will look like in a couple of years LOL

I also have double hets (albino/melanistic that I produced in 2003) that I will be breeding next year to produce Blizzards.

Also produced some double hets this year (albino/ghost).

Next year I will be producing more double hets:
lavender x melanistic
ghost x lavender
ghost x melanistic
blizzard (albino & melanistic) x lavender

And soon I will producing cal kings that are triple and quadruple hets as well as cal kings that will be displaying:
2 traits at one time
3 traits at one time
4 traits at one time

Add to the mix of cal king dominant traits:
aberrant patterns (dot-dash, spotted, etc...)
high white
high white reverse stripe - I already produced an Albino High White Reverse Stripe
high yellow (banana)
stripe

And also add to the mix the Chocolate Bananas. I have a pair (1.1) but the female is from this year. I will be breeding my Chocolate Banana to his litter mate sibling female next year. Then the year after that - Chocolate Banana x Chocolate Banana.

And I would like to breed the Blue-Eyed Blondes to the Lavenders to prove if it is the same gene....I'm not convinced on the Blue-Eyed Blondes; IMO they look just like lavenders.

Kerby...

Wow.

Melanistic cal king? What does that look like?

What two traits are blizzards?

Here is a melanistic from the Mendota, CA locale. It is a recessive gene.

Kerby...

Looks like a chocolate snake with extra coco. Can you produce any odd morphs from melanistic specimens, like albino anery making snow? Or, is just melanistic?

A cal king that has both albinism and melanism at the same time is a Blizzard.

We will find out in a few years what the other combos will look like.

As far as I know, I haven't heard of an anery cal king. Heck, we can't even agree what a "hypo" cal king is LOL. So no "snow" (anery and albino) cal kings yet. The term "snow" is abused and misused all the time. People call High Whites "snows" and that is incorrect. People call Blizzards "snows" and that too is incorrect. Snow must have anery in them.

Kerby...

I know that snow is misused with cal kings. First of all, how do you know if a cal king is anery? Doesnt anery just have shades of black, white, and grey? I wonder if you would really be able to tell the difference if one turned up.

I didnt know blizzards were melanistic albino. We are talking about patternless blizzards here? I was thinking it was a single trait since Ive never heard of a patternless cal king. Learning something new every day....

I got my Blizzards from Shannon Brown a few years ago. When they were younger and in daylight you could see faint patterns (banded) on them. So the albino banded cal king was probably bred to a baja (melanistic) cal king with aberrant pattern. When the two mix (albino and melanistic) all the dark colors (brown and black) disappear resulting in a pink snake as a baby and a white snake as an adult. Sometimes the pattern is visable in daylight.

I used my Albino High White male bred to my Mendota (melanistic) female to produce my double hets. When bred back together, 1/16 will show both traits. I'm sure my Blizzards from that pairing will look the same as the Blizzards that I already have.

Here is a Blizzard as an adult.

Kerby...

I cant believe thats an albino melanistic. It seemed like the pattern was obvious on the melanistic, I would think you would see more pattern. That is exactly what my girlfriend is looking to buy. She inquired someone about it and he sent her pics of high white "snow" animals and called them blizzards (I think). Anyway, great snake, and thanks for sharing your pictures! I enjoyed them all.

But after talking with people like Shannon Brown and Randy Wright, they assure me that is how they were made. I got my Blizzards from Shannon Brown a few years back. I will let you know with 100% proof next year when I attempt to make my own.

I thought and argued the same thing about the pattern issue. The pattern is there and on some you can see it through the pink (as babies) and white (as adults). That is why I used an Albino High White for the albino part of the formula with very little pattern.

I do trust the info from Shannon and Randy.

In corn snakes, when they first bred an amel to anery and produced double hets; and then bred back (1/16 showing both traits), they had no idea what the snake was going to look like or what to call it. In the corn snake industry they are still mixing genes (double, triple, quad hets) and aren't done yet LOL In the cal king industry we are just getting started. People have been complacent with just dominant genes in the cal king industry. It's about time to add more flavors with recessive genes

Kerby...

Mixing two genes, sounds like fun. Maybe I should try doing that. Since you seem to know about king genetics, what are mosaic kings? What traits would you get back from them (ie, what do the dominant genes represent)? Also, spotted, is that a single recessive gene? Is it just a specialized dot-dash? I was thinking of crossing dot-dash and spotted in the future thinking that it would produce both. Renegade had a spotted albino, but it wasnt related to the spots because of the patterning on the side. I guess it was just an aberrant that happened to pull spots.

**what are mosaic kings?**

Mosaics are just aberrant cal kings. I've never bred them, but like most aberrancies they are unpredictable. I'm sure when you breed Mosaic to Mosaic you will get mostly that. But it is not 100% predictable like recessive genes.

**Also, spotted, is that a single recessive gene?**

No, spotted is an aberrancy, not recessive. It is also not 100% predictable, although breeding a spotted to a spotted increases your odds in producing more spotteds.

**Is it just a specialized dot-dash?**

Dot-dash and spotteds came from breeding a striped (dominant gene) to bandeds. Those breedings produce some banded, some stripes, and a lot of in-between (where spotted and dot-dash come from)

I've produced a lot of spotteds and and albino spotteds in the past. IMO, aberrancies are fun to work with, just not predictable. Unfortunately too many people advertise cal kings with incorrect labeling of names and they incorrectly state that a cal king king is het for something that isn't possible.

Kerby...

Daddy was an Albino High White

Mommy was a Mendota (melanistic)

Kerby...

and exactly how, are you going to know which of the offspring are actually albino melanistics?

BobBull

Bob, breeding the double hets (albino, melanistic) to each other will give me albinos, melanistics, blizzards (one out of sixteen), normals, and normal looking that are het for each of the recessive genes.

The problem with cal kings is the small clutch size. Since I won't be getting at least 16 eggs in the clutch, it is a matter of luck on the snake showing both traits at the same time (Blizzard). But I have numerous females that are double hets. Of course once the females get older and have larger clutches and double clutching, then the odds are in my favor.

Kerby...

I misunderstood the "blizzard" and did not realise a blizzard was the expression of both recessive traits,albinism and melanism. If I understand the previous explaination correctly a blizzard has "whiter" white on white rather than a white over a pink on a plain albino. This difference would be the phenotypic expression of the 2 recessive genes.

Bob Bull

from the Davis, CA locale (Rick Staub stock) I have (1.1)

Kerby...

from Don Shores stock. I have (1.1) with an extra female from the same clutch that looks like a regular banana.

Kerby...

There are a lot of projects that never make it to the Classifieds or to Reptile Shows.

Kerby...

Yeah I had a scan through the morph posts and saw an answer to the same question I asked, but thanks for replying. I had a sneaking suspicion they were completely different traits but wasn't sure. So offspring would be double het for both traits, but would appear "normal". What happens if you breed two double het for albinism and lavender albinism? Somone mentioned "opal" albino (which I'd never heard of before) and then there was a reply from someone saying that one of the two recessive traits might be masked by the other. So I'm none the wiser on that score lol. Any ideas?

In a couple of years I will be able to tell you personally. Breeding the double hets (albino & lavender) together will produce albino, lavenders, normals, normals that hets and then 1/16 that will show both traits at the same time. It will be easy to tell the difference as babies between the albinos and lavenders, but I'm not sure what an Albino Lavender will look like, or if it will be called an Opal. I'm hoping that it will be obvious

Kerby...

Brilliant ) good luck. I'm hoping to breed mine either next year or the year after, so should have double hets to breed in er.. four maybe five years time. Will be interesting to see what happens.

what on earth kind of smiley was THAT? lol