Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi forum...
I miss having time to come here.
Anyways, some of you may remember a while back my female albino had a litter of which about 70% died in the first 8 months. Out of the 14 born, 4 survived (2 hets, 2 albinos) and those have been doing good for well over a year now. The hets are living as pets and I still hold the albinos. Check out this color difference..

This female has very very light pale coloration, she has almost no color except a very pale pink in the tail saddles but that's it. The saddles look clear. She was super pale when born and I did not expect her to live, had a huge belly when born and was a very slow starter. This is about 3 months ago right after eating:

here is a pic with flash taken last month:

You can see she still seems to always have a fat belly, but she sheds, eats, defecates normally. It sound weird but her skin seems diff. than all the other boas, almost looser and softer.. it's hard to explain, but it seems very fragile.
Took this pic at same time as one above, taken without flash...

Now, compare her with her brother who was born with lots of color...pic taken last month about 2 days after a shed.

Here is a pic taken with the flash:

Here is one taken without the flash, I love this pic..

This pic is the closest I have gotten to showing his real color, most pics make him look very pink which he is, but there is an orange tinge which I can usually never capture.

Quite a difference!

This is the mom (pic taken in 2001 when I first got her) I wonder what the babies will turn out like, I am hoping the colorful male will retain a lot of the reds/pinks and oranges.

thanks for looking, have a great one!
Time for me to work..
-April

That washed out girl is quite an oddity.. Her coloring and "loose" look makes her seem extremely delicate in the pix. Her brother on the other hand is quite a vibrant and beautiful animal. Does the mother have a peach hue to her? She has alot of wash for a fairly low color adult.
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Randall L Turner Jr.
www.aircapitalconstrictors.com

The male albino baby's skin seems normal only the female has the paper-thin skin... it's very odd. Out of the litter there was only one other albino baby that was as pale as her and it died in the first 2 months.

The mom, I call her Lemondrop since she's such a bright yellow, as you said doesn't have much color. Her saddles are white and very hard to see in normal light (they show up more in the pics than in person!). She has very pale pink/orange color in the tail saddles, the only *real* color on her is up on her face and neck. Along the cheeks and about 8-10" down the neck she has speckles of bright pink, clusters of about 6-15 scales. The pink runs a line down each side of the neck and around the edges of the first few saddles. But overall she's just a big yellow snake.

Here are a few pics taken that show her color the best, I have a very hard time taking pictures of yellow and white with my camera (olympus 2.0 digi)

Here she is gravid, you can see a little of the peachy/pink color at the edge of the saddles up top, hard to see tho..

Here I am holding her and you can see a little color near my thumb, this is where the color stops on her sides.

I hope to breed her with the het again this year, she's had 2 years of break now. The male doesn't have much color, he's a failry dark het and has more orange in his tail then red..

thanks for the comments!
I'm curious to see how the babies turn out.
-april

Why wouldnt you breed the beautiful albino mom to a different male in order to see if it was the weak genetic between the animals which caused such a high mortality rate? I would atleast think about outbreeding her to a different male to see if you could produce healthier babies, 70% mortaility rate is pretty high... Just a suggestion though... Glad to hear 4 of the babies are doing great a year later... Sounds like some well takin care of babies..

Congrats on one year~!~
Sincerely,
Rose Hipskind
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www.srsnakes.com

I would like to breed her to a diff male but this is the only male I have that is adult. haha

Actually, there is more to it than that... I did NOT plan to ever breed these two again since the litter was such a heartbreak, but I was given advice (from hobbiest and breeders alike) saying I should go ahead and try them again. That way I would see if it really is bad genetics or if it was a fluke (I had some low temp fluxuations when she was gravid as well as this was the first litter for the female).

If they breed again and the litter has the same high mortality rate then that will be the end of it for those two.
If that happens I would probably try the female with either a normal or salmon without any albino genes in it or a diff. het, that way I can try to figure out if it is the albino gene that is weak or if the female just throws bad litters.
The male fathered a healthy litter of 34 with a normal female.

I'll post updates here of course if and when it happens.
-April

Are harder to work with, they need to be kept a premium abient temperatures when gravid.

If you are the same person I am thinking of, Jeremy Stone posted about this. In either case the information is helpful.

He talked about his litters last year, then he had a sunglow litter, only three albinos/sunglows lived. All the babies were born with huge bellies. Just keep the ambients up, and use a radiant heat panel if you don't allready that may help improve the results with even heat, on a proportional thermostat of course.

yes, that was my post that Jeremy replied to with a ton of great info and ideas.
I am hoping the main problem was with the temps. I have my adults in a stack of boaphiles with flexwatt heat tape running up the back on one side. I was getting some big temp flux, so I added the big apple thermostat and that stabalized it.
The female seemed to 'hold' the sperm (male stopped mating with her) for almost a month, when I notched up the temps she ovulated less than a week later.
I think I will add a heat pad in with my gravid females in addition to the more ambient heat from the heat tape that way they get actual 'belly heat'.
thanks!

-april

You give advice as if you had numerous litters. How many albino litters have you had?

Simply information from breeders and friends I have gathered. Most from Jeremy Stone and Amanda Burke.

no post
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Randall L Turner Jr.
www.aircapitalconstrictors.com