The hypo female chicago that was bred by the green axanthic male gave birth to a descent sized litter of 13 big healthy babies. There were zero slugs and zero stillborns, and no runts or kinked babies, always a nice sight to see!!! I was actually home taking a vacation day and by luck caught in the middle so I was able to watch the last half of the litter being born, so I was able to make a little video with my phone but the lighting is terrible. The babies all look the same, like plain old normals as far as I can see which is actually great because that means that it's possible that the traits of the parents are simple recessive genes, which would make these babies double hets. If either trait were co-dominant or even polygenetic there is a statistically significant probability that we should have seen a variant animal in these 13 babies. If these traits prove to be in fact simple recessive traits, that would be ideal from the standpoint of being able to predictably reproduce the trait in subsequent offspring. I will need to hold back some of these babies and breed some of the F1's (first generation) to each other and some F1's back to both P1's (parental generation wild caught) to prove this hypothesis. Can't wait to grow these babies up and do the breeding trials and hopefully prove out either or both traits. Make no mistake this is an exciting litter for me!



Pic below of parents of the above litter- male green axanthic and the hypo female (lower right without any black spots) the other female in the pic looks to be gravid as well and due anytime.


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Jeff Benfer

gartersnakemorph.com

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