Reptile & Amphibian Forums

For all of you that are breeding/working with sonoran gophers especially the various color morphs (hypo, ghost, blizzard)I'd like to know if you have personally had problems with the following:

-Getting hatchlings to feed
-Genetic mutations
-Kinks and disformities
-Bad Clutches of eggs

Or any other problems I may have missed.

I have a small collection of these and plan to breed in the upcoming years. Just want to know what to expect.

Thanks
Russ Bates

please excuse the typo/s

Russ,

our group of sonorans is fairly small. ( 3 males and 7 females) When we started with them again 7 years ago we out bred the color morphs to normal wild caught animals from the center of the range in order to reduce the possibility of birth defects, reduced viability of the eggs and neonates etc. So far we have not experienced any problems from these hets and the subsequent albinos etc. that have been produced. But we watch the lineage of individual animals and the results very carefully each year to get desired results.

In the original animals I was working with we had produced 11 clutches over three years and had some end of tail kinking and some other problems such as reduced colors etc. Relatively a very small portion of the hatchlings had any problem at all. Of the 11 clutches a total of 91 hatchlings were produced and we had a total of 3 that had the tail problem and we had 4 that never fed. Since we started the het production and susequent production of albino's etc. we have produced a total of 147 hatchlings (hets, albino's and hypo.) with all feeding and no visible problems. Additionally the viable egg production is running about 97.53 per cent.

I attributed the original probelms to in-breeding in the original lines and just a general lack of genetic diversity in our lines. That is probally a reach on my part, but I am somewhat anal about this from past experience with other colubrids that originated from single or very small groups of morphs. (for instance albino ruthveni males having severe sperm viability problems, leucistic Texas Rats with bulbous eyes etc.) It should be noted that the problems have cleared up since then with the out breeding. We did this several years ago with Leucistic Tx. Rats to reduce the bulbous eyes and it also cleared up. It is a long process of breeding the normals to the albino's, anthy etc and then recreating all the subsequent morphs from hets, but we feel it is worth it over the long haul.

One of the side effects or results from this type program is you can pick the attributes of the various hets that are used to produced a certain look in the color morphs that you personally like. It is pretty apparent that when breeding the hets the darkest and sometimes ugliest of the normal looking hets produce the prettiest of the albino's etc. The darker colors produce a great deal of contrast and brighter reds when displayed in an albino animal for instance.

This is just our approach though and I have several friends that are working with sonorans and are having no problems with the lines that are on the market at this present time.

Bottom line my suggestion is to use your best judgement and evaluate your animals on an individual basis and go forward with what feels right for you.

Anyway good luck with the project, you will enjoy them no matter what you decide to do they are really great animals.

John Cherry
Cherryville Farms

Cherryville Farms - Reptiles

Thanks John, as always you have some great info and are generous to share your knowledge. Are you producing the other color morphs (axanthic, blizzards, hypos)?

I'm very excited about the potential of my small breeding group but I'm trying to throttle that excitement and not feed these gophers to fast or to much. I've heard they'll really plump up but that has not been my experience so far. I do however have two animals that are 2 years old and are starting to thicken up and fortunately don't have the stretched overfed look to them.

How would one go about getting some fresh bloodline without introducing the bad stuff from the wild.

Thanks,
Russ

Hi Russ
I have not really to many problems with my Sonorans Gophers . Once in a great while I would have mutant hatch out or try too but I really think that kind stuff is random with all species of snakes . People have deformities here and there , its just some thing that happens every now and then .

I have not had any kink hatchlings in any of Sonorans .

Sonorans and Bulls are the easiest pits to breed in my opinion and just as easy to breed as cornsnakes . I have had bad cluches and some infertal eggs in clutches but that happens to a lot of us and you just have to make minor adjustments.

I with Agree John, it is wise to outcross to strenghten blood lines. Wheather its using a Wild Caught animals or other unrelated bloodlines. I dont think using WC animal is bad , just make sure they are clean of Parasites inside and outside and a generaly healthy animal.
Even if you use Morph to morph as long as they are unrelated it will streghen the bloodline.
I think money is the problem of inbreeding . Some people wont take the time to outcross because it take to long to make $$ I think that a big down fall in the hobby .

Jason

Russ,

Anytime you are dealing with wild caught animals it can and usually is a pain in the rear. Parasite problems, quarantine for an extended period of time (I do 6 Months), reduced feeding response and sometimes some individuals just do not do well in captivity. With all that said though we actually had a good friend collect some sub-adults for us from the area we wanted them from and proceeded from there.

Adults are more of a problem than juveniles or sub-adults, but a lot of folks don't want to wait the extra 2 years or so that it takes to get them up to size and age for breeding, but in our opinion it is worth the wait for better quality captives that are going to do well.

Past that I would suggest you go to a good breeder that has kept track of his lines in order to get some diversity in the genetic pool and then be very diligent in tracking the blood lines within your group. One side effect of the creating your own lines in any morph is that you get to pick what you like in pattern and color, which to me is kinda cool. Also sometimes you get lucky and produce a new look no one else has. This last year we produced an Albino African House Snake that has nearly solid white sides with the lace pattern from our outcrosses that I really like. (see pic. below)

Currently we are only working with normal, albino and hypo sonorans. So far I have not found any of the others morphs that I was satisfied with personally. Additonally there is so much diversity in the sonorans that are out there in the normal phases that I just do not have room for any more of them in the collection. Maybe Santa will bring me another building to solve that problem, I am sure I could find some new stuff to fill it up LOL.

Good Luck and keep me informed on how you do with the group.

John Cherry
Cherryville Farms

Cherryville Farms - Reptiles