Reptile & Amphibian Forums

To give you a little background of this litter I'd posted the following thread a little over three months ago: http://forums.kingsnake.com/view.php?id=1985015,1985015
The first baby out was born dead but had gone full term. It was just behind the waxy plug and a slug. Another pic of it is in the water dish and it certainly looks anery. Total count was 1 still born, 4 slugs, and 10 live healthy babies! The thing is they all appear anery which has me totally confused about the genetics going on here. I'll wait until after they've shed before posting more pics.

I am so happy that I was able to see this very birth happening while visiting today. This was my first witness of a live boa birthing!!

At first, we both thought there were some silvery babies and some not, but through the birth sacs it was hard to tell from the color of the blood vessels. Had us confused definitely. Once we could separate them, it became more confusing as most, if not all appear silver in color. Hard to say but there is definitely no color thus far. Needless to say, I am very excited to see post shed pictures of these wee minions!

Amanda Rose

I often see pre shed babies with less than normal color. Once they shed a lot of color comes in. Would be totally weird to have a litter of Aneries from a normal looking mom. Yes a few if both parents were hets. Even half of the litter if mom was a het and dad was a visual.
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count (02/01/2010):
42.61 BRB
27.40 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

Agreed Dave, you're right on about expected ratios. After checking in on them a day later, clearly a have gained some color and the other (7) look exactly like Brian Sharp strain anerys. They have that silver/grey and black look which is much different than the yellowish pastel looking father and normal appearing mom that produced them.
I mentioned early on a few years back, that I thought the father may be a new line of anery since he was void of any red, as was his yellow father. If he is indeed anery, one desirable trait is, rather than brown out like the Sharp strain, he's become BRIGHTER! I do believe him to be a homozygous form and his mom a het, so I would expect half of this litter to potentially be anery. When you consider the potential litter size was 15, counting the slugs, live and single still born, 7 anerys makes sense. I'm not one to run around shouting "new morph, new morph" but there's definitely something strange and exciting going on here. This latest breeding is the most outrageous one yet.
I'll update everyone with post shed pics in a few weeks with sex ratio as well. Thank you for posting.

Congrats on the litter! Interesting, and interested to see them post shed.

Neat side patterns in the first pic as well, are they all like that?
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Chris Carille
Marist College, NY
Department of Biology
Chris Carille Photography - carillephoto.com
Garden of Eden Exotics - edenexotics.weebly.com
http://nyexotics.blogspot.com/

Thank you. The crescents and markings have always been irregular in this line. I can't say all appear this way, but the majority are. I'm hesitant to disturb the babies much yet, but I will post more pics post shed so please do stay tuned!

Congrats!! I'm still glad these snakes went to someone on the forum so I can watch the progress. As others have said, looks like they just haven't got their full color yet but time will tell. Still, an exciting litter regardless!
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Aubrey Ross

www.SlipstreamSerpents.com

The original pair of sibling animals I purchased were produced by my friend Tim Frazier. Tim purchased a very high yellow male animal that, if anything, appeared hypo. Other than the fact it was stunning in appearance, he had no history on it at all. Tim put it with one of his adult females and that male died (froze to death after escaping from it's enclosure). Thankfully, the female had taken, and I obtained my pair from this breeding hoping the yellow trait would carry on as a recessive trait.
Tim no longer is involved with breeding and couldn't provide more information when I contacted him three years ago when I told him I'd produced a very unusual looking animal from his "hets". I'm very lucky and excited to continue working to prove out the genetics and feel great things lie ahead!

First off, congrats on the litter no matter what it may turn out to be, babies are always fun!

My BRB experience is very limited, practically nothing compared to what the others here have, but recently I did have a litter of anerys and hets born. While they were different, the first 48 hours or so after birth especially, the hets were extremely close to looking the same as the anerys with just a touch of peach coloring. I have pics posted in a thread below somewhere, from when they were first born, the camera really enhanced the color of the hets a lot more than they appeared in person. There was a major change after the first shed though and now they're nowhere close to each other...I'd really like to see a group pic of them after the first shed. I do see color in all the babies other than the first pic of the still born.

Having said all that, I don't think I would put much into how the still born looks. Even though it went full term, something was wrong with it and since coloring is basically the last thing that developes in snakes (and with these a lot of it doesn't even develope until after birth normally anyways), it can be hard to know if it would have still developed color more had it lived. I can't even begin to count the number of times I've had someone think they'd stumbled onto a new morph based on the coloring of a still born. Granted you've also got the whole litter in front of you to see in person, without the added possible changes in coloring of the babies due to camera or computer monitor settings, so you know what you're seeing a whole lot better than the rest of us.

I'm also not sure how much I would base thoughts on it being a new line on how the adults look simply because there is such a range of variation in what they can come out like anyways...now if you showed us an adult that was still a nice clean black and white anery that would be a different story and I don't doubt you'd really be making a lot of us get excited and start drooling! lol I'm guessing you've probably already tried to dig a little, but have you tried to check back through their lineage and been able to trace lines back to anywhere close to being related to known anerys? I've you've said anywhere, I missed it when I was reading. Unless you do manage to trace it to current lines, the only way to know if it is the same as a current line or different would be to breed it to one and find out.

Again, congrats on the litter, sounds like you've got some fun times ahead if you do have an anery litter on your hands working through finding out what it really is.

Charlie

Thanks Charlie. I tried not to base any conclusion on the stillborn for the reasons you stated. Now that it's been over 48 hours, there clearly are differences in coloration showing. There are still at least three distinct anery appearing animals while the others now have varying degrees of a peach tone. These three still look exactly like the dead one I posted pics of. I hope they remain this way post shed, but time will tell. My friend Amanda took these pics today as I was cleaning. I purposely placed two containers side by side in direct sunlight on the window for comparison. I wish both had paper towels and water dishes within each to compare apples and apples, but it's still easy to see the differences just the same.

Oh, and the lone animal is a different "anery" than the one compared side by side without paper towel or dish.

Sweet score!

The only thing I've ever hit on totally unexpectedly was a normal corn snake that I took in trade that was supposed to be het albino. I bred her to an albino het snow and started hatching out normals, albinos and snows...but at that time snows were worth maybe 30-40$ so it wasn't a really major find. Was still an exciting surprise just to hatch out something that wasn't supposed to be there! lol

Bummer if you can't get lucky and run down the animals history anymore, do you plan to pick up an anery from a known line now to breed to one of yours and prove them as being (or not being) the same or compatible with the current gene's out there?

Charlie

I plan to put one of my suspected anery males with an adult female hypo next year to create DH ghosts, and then raise them up to see if ghosts are produced as a result. My intent is to prove out my genetics first. If I see a trend of my anerys and ghosts NOT browning out, I think that says something in itself. My goal is to observe and prove what's going on here. It's way to early here for me to say and it may be years before I know through multiple breeding trials.
I understand the need to determine the compatibility, or lack thereof, with the Sharp line anery down the road, but that's not my primary goal at the moment. Let's just see what these 10 animals look like post shed. Maybe all will color up, but there's still no saying what these babies may be het for. Is there a higher form down the road? I've seen crazy variations in the past two past litters prior to this from the original hets. This third litter is way different looking than those because this was a male from the first breeding put back to his mom. I also will need to out breed too so I have my work cut out for me.