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About how long does it take before snow bearded dragons completely lighten up? Thanx

>>About how long does it take before snow bearded dragons completely lighten up? Thanx

Some snow dragons never do lighten up. It veries so greatly that it is too hard to say. Some will lighten through the first few sheds then stop. Others will keep on getting lighter into adulthood. It greatly depends on the way the hypomelanistic trait effects your particular dragon, if it does at all. I will tell you this though, out of 99 hatchlings I had one that was white and nearly patternless out of the egg. That should give you an idea of how hard it is to tell how any particular one will lighten with age. Most will stay a cream color (what most people call a "hypo" However, there are a couple lines out there that produce more "snows" than hypos.

Also, don't expect a "snow" dragonto be white all the time. The epidermal melanophores are still very much functional and just like sandfires, reds, oranges, etc.. they "fire up" and display their brightest white color. The misconception many people have is that snows are always white which just isn't true with most of them, they fire up to white as they heat up throughout the day and the melanin is retracted back into the "holding vessels" under the skin so the black/grey goes away displaying the much whiter dermal layer of skin as the animal has less of a need to draw and hold more heat.

Please note that this iscertainly not law by any means ....LOL.... merely a guidline for what you can normally expect from the snow/hypo lines. There are always exceptions as anything is possible when your talking about genetic traits.

Hope that helps a bit!

Later,
Robert
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Great spirits have always been recieved with violent opposition by mediocre minds. Albert Einstein

I sure wish I had been told this information previous to my purchaseing a Snow! Mine I've had since September, and he's as dark as can be. When he's fired up he's kind of Caramel colored. I believe the Snow line is grossly misrepresented. My Orange Snow from DBN though is a wonderful specimen. She's exactly what I had expected!