Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi there,

I have a friend who would like to know what he needs to breed a new type of corn snake he's been hearing about. He already has a female albino snow corn and is thinking of buying another so that the offsring would be Ultramel, the question is what sort of corn does he need to do this?

Thanks

That's an ultramel corn.

As your friend already has a snow, he is halfway there. What he needs to do is to get either an ultra (AKA ultrahypomelanistic) corn snake or a heterozygous ultra corn or an ultramel corn. The ultra mutant gene is recessive to the normal version of the gene. An ultra corn has its melanin considerably reduced from the normal amount but still has some melanin. The ultra and amelanistic mutant genes seem to be alleles, which means they are different forms of the same gene. In other words, there are six different combinations of genes that could make a gene pair:
1. amelanistic//amelanistic
2. normal//amelanistic
3. normal//normal
4. ultra//ultra
5. normal//ultra
6. ultra//amelanistic
Ultramel is gene pair 6 -- ultra//amelanistic. It has some melanin but not as much as an ultra corn snake. The amount of melanin is more or less intermediate between amelanistic and ultra corn snakes.

Here are the possible ways to make ultramel in the first generation when one parent is a snow:
1. snow x ultra --> all ultramel heterozygous anerythristic
2. snow x ultramel --> 1/2 amelanistic heterozygous anerythristic, 1/2 ultramel heterozygous anerythristic
3. snow x heterozygous ultra --> 1/2 normal looking but heterozygous amelanistic heterozygous anerythristic, 1/2 ultramel heterozygous anerythristic

Paul Hollander