Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Woo-hoo! Sorry, no pictures yet, But eight thayeri eggs in my first-ever clutch of thayeri are now pipping after 73 days of incubation at 78-79 F. Only noses so far -- will post pics once they've shed. This is so cool! Just like Christmas morning waiting to see what each wrapped package holds . . .

Tom Corley

>>Woo-hoo! Sorry, no pictures yet, But eight thayeri eggs in my first-ever clutch of thayeri are now pipping after 73 days of incubation at 78-79 F. Only noses so far -- will post pics once they've shed. This is so cool! Just like Christmas morning waiting to see what each wrapped package holds . . .

Congratulations Tom!!!!!!
I look forward to seeing some pics.......

You are hooked for LIFE now......LOL
Xmas in July!
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John Lassiter
Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...
www.coastalbendcaptivebreeding.com

Congrats!! Can't wait to see the pics!

Wow, seems like all our Thayeri are hatching at the same time. John has had his hatching this past week... I have several noses and one out from my first clutch of the year, and now you! WOOHOO!!
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Aubrey Ross

©
www.SlipstreamSerpents.com

Thanks, Aubrey. So far three have emerged completely -- two msp like the dam (see picture below) and one intermediate/leonis like the sire. Of course they are milky now and won't show their true colors until they shed. Hopefully when I get home from work today their will be more that have abandoned their shells. This is fun!

You have a beautiful breeding pair!
Hope to see your hatchlings soon...

greetings
Michael

Those parents have some rich color... hopefully it was passed down to the babies!
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Aubrey Ross

©
www.SlipstreamSerpents.com

Tom, congrats. Will be nice to see some photos of pure thayeri posted......Mike Bodner

Mike Bodner's Thayeri

>>Tom, congrats. Will be nice to see some photos of pure thayeri posted

How pure???????
What's a pure thayeri??????
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John Lassiter
Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...
www.coastalbendcaptivebreeding.com

Great question, and one much discussed on this and other forums. I'll add my 2 cents here.

Although the term "pure" connotes some sort of absolute condition or characteristic, I've observed that in herpetoculture it is a relative term having to do with the provenance of an animal. There is a chain of ownership of the animals in the ancestry of any given snake, and term "purity" is all about the reputation of the breeders of the animals in the snake's lineage.

All that I can claim with certainty is the I bought the dam from John Cherry's thayeri stock (via Don Soderberg) and the sire from Tim Gebhardt in Texas. These guys have a reputation for maintaining breeding lines of thayeri that they believe to be unadulterated by the practice of intentionally crossing different subspecies to produce "hybrids". Although I believe there is nothing intrinsically wrong with breeding "hybrid" animals, it's my personal preference that in my own collection I breed what I and others believe to be derived from strictly thayeri-to-thayeri pairings.

Admittedly, without DNA comparisons between animals in my collection with wild-caught, expertly identified thayeri, I can never be sure. I can live with that.

Just some thoughts,

Tom

Great Post Tom!...

That has been the "jist" of what this forum has become...

Now I'm not saying that is bad.....I certainly have done all my research and purchased from some well known reputable breeders......All my thayeri, greeri, ruthveni and alterna are pure except for the gray pinbanded pair that produced those mutts pictured up above.........I am not a hybridizer....I am merely doing an experiment to see what they would produce....it wasn't all my idea...A couple of well known mexicana folks were interested in the little experiment too.....

Here's a question.....
Where are pure thayeri found in the wild?
Does anyone think thayeri interbreed with other species or subspecies???????
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John Lassiter
Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...
www.coastalbendcaptivebreeding.com

Here's a question.....
Where are pure thayeri found in the wild?
Does anyone think thayeri interbreed with other species or subspecies???????

There is not an easy answer to that, and I have seen some WC animals from areas that could be called intergrades with thayeri and alterna, plus I have no doubt that many other "odd" populations exist but are not sampled. And I think that thayeri are a population that arose from some convergence anyway and are in that sense a hybrid population of some ancestral mexicana groups. This would in a way explain the great deal of variability found in them, at least to me it does...
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___________________________
Herp Conservation Unlimited

If people really learn from their mistakes, I should be like the smartest guy in the world

I had a guy this year that sent me a picture of a VERY thayeri looking snake.....
He asked me if I wanted it....

I asked if he had some background info on it and he told me it was a hybrid......
The mother was an amel ruthveni and the father was a mex mex.....

Just a small example of a south to north genetic drift.....
Ruthveni to the south....mex mex in the middle and thayeri to the north of mex mex.........

I'm not saying that every time you breed a ruthveni to a mex mex you will get thayeri looking offspring but this one was......

I have an opinion that Ruthveni is that ancestoral grandparent to all of them....But it is just an opinion/theory......
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John Lassiter
Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...
www.coastalbendcaptivebreeding.com

Congratulations! I know how exciting that first clutch is! Can't wait to see pictures.
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Michelle
www.AssortedSerpents.com
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.

Thanks for the good wishes, everyone.

Out of eight good eggs came 4 msp, 2 orange leonis, and 2 yellowish leonis. All look fat and feisty. Several have really nice head patterns. I will post pictures after they have all shed.

Again, thanks for your encouragement - it's nice to receive some validation in a world where most people look at you like you've grown antlers when you tell them you breed Nuevo Leon kingsnakes. (I'm sure you all know the "look"!)

Let them look like they want!

I am breeding thayeris,greeris and alternas!and i am damned proud of it!

cheers!
Michael