Reptile & Amphibian Forums

These are a couple out of the clutch that show a good bit of orange tint in the upper body right out of the egg. I'm going to hold them back and see if they show as much orange as I hope they might. I have noticed that with my adults, other adults that I have seen and with hatchlings that the ones with more orange seem to have less bold blotches on average and wondered if others have noticed this to be the case? By less bold I mean the spots in the upper part of the body on the ones with more orange dont get as dark as they age but do still get the light chocolate ones down near the tail. Randy Whittington

RW

RW

I like the unbordered saddles in the front half of the body. Out of my clutches of jani, it seems that these "more orange" hatchlings do develop into the more extreme adults. The male in the next two pictures had this trait at hatching and here he is as a two year old.

Here is another animal hatched last year that is striped, but also showed a more orange front third of the body.

Also Steve, are you going to Daytona? I would love to stop by and possibly grab some of your jani to add to my group.

Thanks,
Matt Turner

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Matt & Nicci Turner
www.selectiveorigins.com

Randy........I believe that the two hatchlings that you posted will look similar to their sire, a classic jani that has back blotches that fade mid-body and transition to brick red(chocolate?) on the posterior. I see that those two have dark heads, so you can expect nice rusty red heads on that pair.

Now, as to the question of higher orange resulting in less bold anterior blotches......to a certain degree, maybe. I reposted the pic of my two '04 high orange holdbacks. The one at the top will definitely have somewhat faded anterior blotches. The one at the bottom will have much sharper and contrasting blotches. When I'm looking to pick out neonates that will develop more solidly black anterior blotches, I look to see which ones have the sharpest and thickest black edging from day one. These anterior blotches fill in from the outside edge to the center, as they mature. I'm kind of curious about your hatchlings. Are the best looking of your clutch predominately males? I seem to get a much higher percentage of screamer males every year than females. I'm starting to wonder if some kind of sexual dimorphiwm is involved here, or perhaps it is simply my personal experience.

Another color trait that I would like to see enhanced by selective breeding, is that bluish white edging around the posterior blotches that most jani have to some degree. Enhancing that blue to contrast with those brick red blotches should yield some even more spectacular animals. In my opinion, jani have more color combinations wrapped up in them than corn snakes.........JANI RULE!!!!.............regards.......Steve G.

Here's a hatchling with dark outlined blotches that I think as you, will age to have much darker ones. The ones like this in the clutch seem to be colored much like this one (less orange tint in the upper body).
I have not sexed them yet as they ate their first meal a couple days ago and I'm going to give them another day or two before sexing them. I'm curious to see which ones will be males in the clutch and if the ones that appear that they might grow to be the more colorful ones will be more males on average. I'll make a post after sexing them. Thanks for the input. Randy W.