Total was a frustrating day in the baby snake mines. I am pretty much convinced that I have yet another Hypo gene floating around in here and it's driving me nuts. I'm getting way too many instances of breeding Crimson to Crimson and getting normal colored snakes. This happened the last couple of years, and I just assumed that I had some very brightly colored normal Miami's that I just had mislabeled as Crimsons. But I'm not swallowing that excuse any longer. Then in another instance I bred an Ultra Hypo to an Amber and again got all normal colored babies, which should have been Hypos. Last year I bred this very same Ultra Hypo to a regular Hypo female and got all Hypos as babies. So what in the world is going on? I keep tight controls on whom I breed to whom and make note of ANY male introduced with a female, even if there were no signs of breeding activity.
So I am muttering to myself as I am going through checking on eggs that are hatching out, and pick up yet another clutch of Crimson eggs and flip up the paper towel to see what is laying on top of the vermiculite, having hatched out of the eggs. I thought I was having spots before my eyes when I saw this critter laying in the corner right on top of the pile:
To add insult to injury, there were a couple of normals in this clutch as well. Some days I just feel clueless about what in the world I am doing with these animals. If someone else had told me the stuff I am running into this year, I would just assume they were paying the price of bad record keeping and forget about it.
But something is definitely amiss with the results I am getting from Hypos, that should be pretty much cut and dried.