Hello All-
I have been working for almost 6 years to produce a lighter Dumerils boa. It started out in 1999 when I aquired a unrelated 1.2, one normal male and female and another female that had a lot more ivory showing through and over all better color. She's not a show stopper but next to a normal Dumerils she is considerably better.
In 2002 that female produce 13 very nice babies when bred to the original male. At the time, I had little experience with the various color differences of Dumerils. Honestly, I was happy to get anything. I kept back two offspring from that season, one very dark one and one very light one. The light one sticks out a bit in this group photo(near center).
Here's that same girl last year at 4 feet...
This is a shot of her next to a black saddled male...
And a shot of her taken today at just under 6 feet, 3 years old...
This season I used a different male and together with my original female, they produced a perfect litter of 16 babies. Their was a near even split of Dumerils I considered to be "pastel" and normal. I was a little surprised that they(pastels) were easy to pick out of the group. It did not matter if they were black saddled or brown saddled, the pastels had a unique wash to them. For lack of a better word, they looked muted and had a much softer color to them. Below is a darker normal next to one of the pastels.
Why pastel, you ask? Well the trait definately involves a reduction in black pigment. You might be saying, that's hypomelinism and you are right. But I imagine that a Hypomelinistic Dumerils would look very much like a Ghost Ball Python, in which, they always look like they are in shed. This trait does not do that. But as in pastel in boa constrictors once the black is removed, underlying colors are brought to the top... like ivory, yellow, and peach.
This is an outdoor picture of one of this seasons babies...
The trait also has a secondary feature that is similar to Ball Python Pastels as the animal ages, the saddles open up a bit. This replaces the hatchling saddle color with much lighter tones and leaves only a mascara thin outline of the original saddle color. This is a picture of the darker 02 female next to a brown saddled male. For a boa that I kept because she was dark, she sure got light..
All that said, I do not plan on selling any of these f1's as pastels until I can do 1 or 2 more breeding trials. One would involve breeding one of the 02 females to an unrelated male, to test the trait's "staying power" when outbred. The other would involve breeding the other 02 female to one of this season's males.. to see if the trait strenghtens, f1 x f1. And since I used different males in the 02 and 05 breedings, minimal inbreeding is taking place.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. Give me you worst, lol.
Later-
Matt Schubarth
Pet Nebula
lol
