Jungle vs. Pure Corn weight & size difference

I have noticed since aquiring my jungle corn in Jan of '05 as an " '04 hatchling", she's been much bigger and gaining weight and length much faster than my pure corns. In April of '05 she weighed 148 gms vs my June '04 hatched butter mot boy who weighed in at 55.5 gms. In mid May '05, she weighed 170 gms, vs 69.4 gms. of the same butter mot male. That is the last time I've weighed them til today. 9/8/05. They are both eating 2 appropriate prey sized mice per feeding once a week, which I do until I feel they are ready to move up to a larger mouse size. (The butter mot is eating large fuzzies, he wont eat hoppers, snubs his nose at them. The jungle, hoppers) Weighing both of them today, the jungle is at 229 gms and at least 34 in, the butter mot is at 119 gms and MAY be 31 in. Interesting to me is the weight and size difference in the two that aren't so many months apart in birth. Has anyone else noticed this in their collections or taken a study of it?? Is it genetic (Cali King blood vs pure corn) or because of the size of prey??? :shrugs:

I've not noticed my jungles growing faster. In fact, mine are the very opposite! I have an '03 jungle that is smaller than many of my '04s.

That is so strange Terri. My new rootbeer addtition from Carol is also much larger than the pure corns I got from her that hatched AFTER she did. Maybe a project on the subject is something worth pursuing?? The influence Cali King/emoryi has on weight/length in corn crosses?? Too bad I'm not in college anymore, this would have made a cool term paper! :grin01:

I notice a difference in growth pattern between our jungles (50/50 corn/king) and pure corns - find corns to be very consistent in growth - a shed every 4-5 meals and move up a prey size every two sheds. The jungles we have had are much less consistent - major growth spurts and a bit more tendency to gain girth between growth spurts - they do feed like crazy, but some food seems to go toward fat, and then they will hit a growth spurt and lengthen a lot all at once.

With out rootbeers (creamsicle X great plains ratsnake so approximately 25% corn) - they hatched much larger than pure corns, feed and grow much faster but with same consistent rate - shed every 4 meals, but they started on fuzzy mice so were taking adult mice far sooner and they are still putting on length without any tendency to fat. These yearlings are our first rootbeers, but I expect them to reach peak size by 2 years and then expect I will have to really watch their feeding - the parents are both chunky snakes and while the creamsicle male is over 4 feet - they are typical of what has been reported for creams - shorter and thicker bodied than pure corns.

I think with these hybrids a lot depends on the percentage of corn in the line and how closely the two parent lines are related to each other. I suspect there may be more hybrid vigor in rootbeers that are about 50/50 due to a lot of common genes that align but express different alleles. I suspect the greater genetic differences between corns and kings lead to more variety in how jungle corns look as well as how they grow.

Interesting topic regardless and would be great to hear experiences from others,

mary v.

My April '05 suspected rootbeer baby (75% corn/25% emoryi if I'm right) is maybe half the size as my yearling corns and growing like a weed, but then one of my May '05 pure corns is right behind him. They're almost the same size. My other '05 babies from May and June are much smaller. And then my adult cream male is fairly slender like my pure emoryi.

I have an '03 bull/corn (50/50 cross) that is as big as my pure adult corns and still growing. My '03 pure bull is bigger. Of course, bulls are beefier, bigger snakes so that hybrid cross would be expected to grow faster.

I'm looking forward to getting and breeding some jungles soon, but I'm going to see how my Russian ratsnake and my corns do at breeding. Being ratsnakes, it may be easier to get them to breed and have very similar physical attributes as the jungles.

Genetics, go figure...

JTGoff69 said:

That is so strange Terri. My new rootbeer addtition from Carol is also much larger than the pure corns I got from her that hatched AFTER she did. Maybe a project on the subject is something worth pursuing?? The influence Cali King/emoryi has on weight/length in corn crosses?? Too bad I'm not in college anymore, this would have made a cool term paper! :grin01:

Click to expand...

Yes, and a good reason to get more snakes.