Reptile & Amphibian Forums

last year i hatched a clutch of eggs from an amel male and a caramel female - {at the time i knew that the amel male was also het anery because he produced a few snow babies with my female ghost....} i thought perhaps i had a chance for some butters if i was lucky enough to have a caramel het for amel, but was not sure about that because i don't quite understand the type of anery needed to make a caramel... anyhow, last years clutch (the amel male and caramel female) produced a pretty even mix of normals, (albeit very yellow normals), and amels... hence i deduce that the caramel must be het for amel, and with no babies that looked anything like a butter, that the anery het in the male is not the right one to produce caramel/butter babies........
the saga continues...
this years batch has so far produced 3 amels (the rest of the eggs have yet to pip) and 2 of the 3 have modified patterns... one that is striped for 2-3 saddles length and then zigzagish for a few more saddles.... the other striped for 3-4 saddles, but then normal the rest of the way... can anyone give an explanation of this trait, i've read that it's co-dominant? please help,
appreciated!

Sounds like you have zigzag in your cornsnake's ancestry (though a photo would help on the 'striping' part comment). There is no gene for zigzag... it's one of those traits that can pop up (or not) if any of the parents came from lineage that showed it. It's an unpredictable patterning. You can breed two fully zigged snakes together and get normally patterned offspring or even partially patterned offspring. Since you can also pair up two non-zigged corns from zigged ancestry and wind up with zigged offspring, it doesn't follow the pattern of genes at a single locus, whether you're talking co-dominant to something or plain old recessive.

It's fairly common in lines that came from lavenders, although I've seen some pretty heavily zigzagged charcoals too.

-Kat
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"You keep WHAT in your freezer?"
"Mice. And rats. If that bothers you, I can call them 'cows' instead."

Yep it sounds like your caramel is het for amel as well, but if you want to produce butters, your amel MUST be het for caramel. There isn't an anery gene involved when making Butters. A butter is simply the amel version of the caramel. NOW, if you take last years batch of Amels and breed them back to each other, you should get approx 25% Butters. All of your babies will be het for Caramel, and if they aren't showing it, will also be het for Amel. So, save those amel babies, and breed them back to each other You could get some snows too
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Daniel Stephens
waynestephens@gmail.com