New member need some advise

Hello everyone, I needed a new hobby so corn snakes it is. I want to do a small scale breeding project and I don't know what morphs to pair to breed. I do currently have a super sunglow motley male and a tessera female. I want to have 2 breeding pairs. I am looking for suggestions for my next two buys an what pairing I should do.

That's a question only you can answer. My son had 20 anerys and tessera anerys but I preferred brightly colored morphs. I love orchids and peppermints, and have 1.5 lavenders for future breeding projects. If I wasn't working with a poor man's wallet I would have bought Palmettos already.

Welcome to the forum, Millertime87. You may get some ideas by perusing the classifieds and other posts here. There are pictures of some beautiful snakes here if you do a little diggeing. Like Twolunger said, only you can make that decision. Best wishes on your projects.

Millertime87 said:

Hello everyone, I needed a new hobby so corn snakes it is. I want to do a small scale breeding project and I don't know what morphs to pair to breed. I do currently have a super sunglow motley male and a tessera female. I want to have 2 breeding pairs. I am looking for suggestions for my next two buys an what pairing I should do.

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There's another forum called iansvivarium.com and they have a ton of useful morph information that you might like!


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Specifically, they even have a "morph calculator" of sorts to determine what morphs you might get from the details you input about the mother and father snakes.


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Ok thank you everyone for the information, I guess the moral of the story is I can breed anything I want. Like I said before I am new to the hobby and I didn't want to do any breeding mistakes, I breed chickens an there is some beeeds you just don't cross and I didn't want to make that kinda mistake with my corns. The second question is if inbreed the two together will I still get a few sunglow motley babies, cause I do know half will be tessera?

*if I breed*

Pick what YOU like, not what you think others will like.

I chose to focus mainly on Miami's, (Miami Tessera's to be more specific). I am working towards refining them to what I want.

Sounds like that will be a good looking snake. Change of subject but what rack system is everyone useing and what size tubs for the adult breeders is recommended???? I'm leaning towards Reptile basics brand. Thoughts????

Millertime87 said:

Ok thank you everyone for the information, I guess the moral of the story is I can breed anything I want. Like I said before I am new to the hobby and I didn't want to do any breeding mistakes, I breed chickens an there is some beeeds you just don't cross and I didn't want to make that kinda mistake with my corns. The second question is if inbreed the two together will I still get a few sunglow motley babies, cause I do know half will be tessera?

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If I understand you right, you want to know if you cross your sunglow motley with your tessera, Will you get some sunglow motley babies in addtition to the Tessera babies?

The answer is, 'If the Tessera female is also carrying the genes for sunglow motley (which is the recessive motley and recessive amel genes. You *may* get some sunglow motley babies.

Is your Tessera a 'normal colored' tessera, or is she also amel? Do you know if she is het for any genes?

Most of the cool color and pattern genes in cornsnakes are recessive genes - that means a snake has to have two of them for the trait to show. They have to inherit the same gene from both parents so both parents have to at least carry one of those genes.

Tessera is one of only a few dominant genes that exist in cornsnakes. This means that the snake only has to have one of those genes for the trait to show.

In addition, your Sunglow motley is also the result of Selective Breeding - This means that someone took Amel corn snakes... and bred them to reduce the white patches where the black pigment would normally be.. This is a result of lots of small nudges over generations of snakes to shift multiple genes which affect the pattern and reduce the black borders on the saddle pattern. The Motley gene also reduces the black pigment expression - so that may mean that it did not take too long to reach the 'Sunglow' effect.

So IF your tessera girl is carrying the Amel gene and the Motley gene, You may get some amel motley babies, though they may or may not be 'Sunglow' depending on how much Momsnake's pattern genes disrupt the Sunglow effect.

Now if Mom does not carry those genes, Breeding her and your sunglow is going to produce some normally patterned and colored babies as well as some normal colored tessera babies but ALL of those babies will be carrying the Amel and Motley genes from Dadsnake - they will be 'het' for those traits..

Now if you decided to keep a few of those babies (tesseras, perhaps?) and raised them, and then either breed them to each other, OR breed a female BACK to your Sunglow Motley. You can get all sorts of babies in a clutch, Amels, Amel Motleys, Amel Tesseras, Normals, normal colored Motleys, Tessera Motley, or even Amel Tessera Motleys!

How's that for fun?

NancyG

NancyG

Well maybe fun for you but my tiny walnut is having quit the challenge absorbing all that info. According to the breeder the Teresa female is 66.6 het for scaleles and anery and the mama was a Miami phase. So no gene for motley. The rest are possible genes. I might just by a female sunglow motley so I can breed those two unless you can think of something better�� I'm thinking of looking for a buckskin oketee male to breed with my tessera if u know where I came find a nice neonite

Regarding your question about rack systems, I have bought racks from Reptile Basics, Boaphile, and Dragons4you. All were well made and came with belly heat installed. Plug into your thermostat and go. I prefer the racks that Boaphile and Dragons4you make that can handle either Sterilite 1753 15 qt containers, or the 1755 32 qt containers. I raise my snakes in hatchling racks and transfer them to the 15 qt size until they are adults, then put them in the 32 qt size. My older Boaphile rack holds 18 of the 1753 or 9 of the 1755.

Having said that, I saw an inexpensive rack system on YouTube that is built from 2 sets of plastic shelves sold at Home Depot. I built the rack in 2 days, the first day I had to wait for glue to dry. The new rack holds 16 of the Sterilite 28 qt containers, but you can build it to accept any containers you want to use. Easy to build and gave me a lot of space for future adults. 40 qt containers fit in the same shelves, but have to be inserted from the side. Check it out on YouTube.

I might go ahead an try that, it will be a while till all that happenes
Since all my breeders are babies still. I just a tad bit work it's about the inbreeding with all that but I do understand that's part of the process

Twolunger
I looked at both those sites, def some good looking products. I also found a company called animal plastics and there economy racks are wayyyy cheaper and accommodate the 15qt an 32qt. Do you have any insite on those products? I don't want to buy a cheap pice of garbage but I also don't wanna blow my life savings on a rack system either lol

Forgive me for jumping in. I know about Animal Plastics and they have a good reputation. I plan to buy from them when I need a big enclosure. I know they have options that are not always on their web site so call them and talk to them. I don't specifically know about their racks, however.

No need to apologize this is a public foram, an I do appreciate any an all information I can get. Like I stated before I am a novice and want to learn as much as I can do I don't make any mistakes in this hobby since we are dealing with living creatures. But yes according to the wonderful world of YouTube I found so good info about animal plastics. I just like to hear up to date unbiased reviews on any product I buy, I don't like to buy things twice.

I agree with educating yourself all you can. I'm that way too. I do want to caution you though, that you will make mistakes. All you can do is minimize mistakes and with the information you are gathering none of the mistakes should prove devastating.

Knowing I was someday going to need a large enclosure if I was able to get my eastern indigo snake, I talked to the Animal Plastics folks when I was at Tinley a year ago. They were very easy to talk to. I feel like I got real straight answers. So between all the good reviews, doing a lot of research, and talking to them, I'm looking forward to doing business with them in 1.5 to 2 years.

On a slightly different topic, if you don't have one already, the time to find a competent snake vet is before you need them. Talk to people in your area, especially any at a local herp society for recommendations. It often pays just to take one of your animals in for a general check up to get to know the vet and to establish yourself as a patient. Then when you really need them they will be there for you. I know that my vet that has a special emergency number that they only give out to patients. However they do have a referral to 24/7 clinic on their website for everyone.

I know that people with large numbers of animals can't take them all to the vet. I only have four and taking them for regular check ups gives me great peace of mind.

Dollysmom
As always thanks for the info, I do believe my current vet does see retires I will ask next time I take the dog in. This forum does seem to have a lot of helpful people and are willing to take the time and give out information instead of chastising them for not knowing the basics. I think the economy rack is going to be the one. Is a 32 qt tube going to be big enough for my breeders? A 20 gallon fish tank seems to be the standard an it has 360 sq inches of floor space a 32 qt tube has 391 sq inches, so this is bigger so should be good?

I'm glad you have a vet on hand. I believe 32 qt should be fine, but I'm not a breeder so I hope a breeder to two chimes in with their recommendations and experience. Best wishes and yes, I've found this to be a very supportive place.

I currently have an Animal Plastics rack, and you won't find one heck of a lot of difference between the racks made by the reputable companies. I think AP shipped their rack to me unassembled, but it wasn't a problem building it. When you talk about container sizes for adults, there's a big difference between snakes. The young adults up to 4 feet seem comfortable in a 32 quart container, but larger than that I would want the 40 quart size. I have a dozen 3 year olds I call adults that are kept in 28 quart containers, but eventually I will house them in 40 quart sizes.