One of the first Lavender Motleys for this year...

well obviously you can learn just about everything that's known about lavender corns from the link off the front page at www.cornsnakes.com.... I don't profess to be the expert here, either. I can share some observations, though:


I do know that motley is a "simple recessive gene" in that to "express" (i.e. be visually apparent that the snake posesses the gene) the carrier MUST be homozygous for the gene; what that means, is that the carrier MUST have obtained the ressesive version of the gene (as opposed to the dominant version) from BOTH parents. So, if you breed a motley to a motley (i.e. both breeders are homozygous-recessive) then their progeny will be 100% motley. Breed a pair with one homozygous and the other only "het" or heterozygous then you will get 1:2 "normal" and 1:2 "Homozygous-recessive" (i.e. motley). You can also breed two "hets" and 3:4 of the progeny will be "normal" (although with a chance at also being "hets") and 1:4 will get the combined recessive genes to become a "motley". Obviously there's no real point in breeding a "het" carrier to a "normal" because although a portion of the progeny will likely be "hets" you would need years of patience and specific breeding trials to find out who is who (this would ONLY be practical if you had a completely unheard of gene that you were working with, otherwise you'd just get your snake a "het" or "homo" partner from an other breeder.)

Now, I hope I haven't lost you yet... I know that's a bit thick, and since I never was much fer book lernin I might not be the best person to attempt to describe it. But if you ARE still with me, go through the above paragraph and replace every instance of motley with lavender. I don't know for a fact that lavender is a true "simple recessive" gene, but for all practical purposes I think it can be described to behave as such. So this FINALLY brings me to a more concise answer for your question....

If you want a lavender motley, you either need to wait patiently as Rich (and other breeders?) build their personal stock to the point where they feel they can begin to sell them, OR get yourself a couple or few motleys, and a couple or few lavs (really, 2.2 or 3.3 would be much better) and begin the process of converging a pair of morphs which would entail creating an F1 generation of snakes that are 100% normal double hets. Once the F1 generation is breeding, it's just like the double-het pairing I describer above... only to the power of 2... that's because you have two distinct genes you're working with now. So, give me a sec to whip out my GnP Calc...

Youd get progeny in roughly these percentages:

25% double-het
12.5% motley het lav
12.5% normal het lav
12.5% lav het motley
12.5% normal het motley
6% lav
6% motley
6% normal, non-het
6% lavender motley!

So, to extrapolate, if you have a pair of snakes that are double-het lav-motley, and you are lucky enough to get them to breed with each other, and you get an average clutch of a dozen good eggs, you have a (I'm not a mathmetician) what, 1 in 60 chance of getting a single lavender motley?

You can see how the effort Rich and other breeders put into their projects is no joke, let alone the demands for space and attention, and that's just ONE up-and-coming morph.... There are projects Rich is working on most of us are completely unaware of too, I'm sure.

DISCLAIMER: As I said, I'm not claiming to be an "expert". If you see an error in what I posted I've really like to know about it, but I think I got it all out straight....

^Curtis

When you breed double heterozygous animals together, you have a 1 in 16 chance for each of the babies to be homozygous for those two genes. What this does NOT mean, is that if you produce 16 babies, you will definitely get a double homozygous animal. In reality, the number can be anywhere from zero to all of them, depending on your luck quotient.

With triple heterozygous animals, the statistics you are working with are 1 in 64.

With quad hets, 1 in 256.

And so on, and so on.....

WOW Rich do you ever sleep???!!!

Thanks for the info you two. It informed me, confused me, and frightened me LoL But I am still gonna give it a try. Shhhhhh Dont tell my husband But I am gonna buy a Motley and a Lavender from ya Rich in August. Try to let me know when you think you will be shipping my first order. I will try to get these included in that bunch hopefully it wont cost me more shipping??

I'm not sure which explenation hurts my head more, mine or Rich's; actually, probably Rich's because it's so succinct yet at the same time quite overwhealming.

So, for fun, how long would it take and/or how large a breeding program would you want in order to ensure that eventually you had at least a few of your new combo-morph to begin selling to other breeders? (this is for fun, so let's say the target morph is an Anery-A/B, Hypo-A/B, and Motley all in "one" snake.) ...64, ...256, ...1024... that means you'd have a 1:1024 "chance" of any offspring between penta-het parents expressing all five traits homozygously (I think.) Assuming, of course, that you could acquire all the proper F0 parents you wanted and that they were all "producers" you'd probably shoot for say 100.100 penta-hets from the F1? maybe 10.10 proven snakes homozygous for the selected traits as the foundation. Probably would breed them out for an other "set" of penta-hets with nothing else to do in that season, but for sanity's sake lets assume you only ever have your 100.100 penta-hets going forward....

15 good eggs per female per season would give us 1500 eggs from this project, or a nearly 150% chance of getting our combo. Put another way, we might get lucky and have one or possibly more penta-homos; the odds say less than 1.5 winners per clutch, but since lots of corns double-clutch lets give ourselves the benefit of a doubt (well, luck, really) and say that our F1 from our penta-hets gave us 2 contendors (like you would know who is who in this wild experiment mixing anerys and hypos, but who's counting) and the further benefit of luck might mean we get one male and one female.

So what have we put into the project so far, to get these 2 snakes, which *might* breed in a couple years? We had to acquire and tend to 20 breeders for at least one season. We had to raise their 200+ progeny; when said snakes were 2 (because ALL of them were in perfect health, and fed regularly and are actually ready to breed at age 2, right!) we had to breed them, then "deal" with the 1500 hatchlings, and identify the only two that were penta-homos. 3 years have passed, and we have two extremely valuable hatchlings that are going to keep us up at nights wondering if they'll learn to eat well or even produce if they live that long.

So, 5 years into the project, 40 mice, 20,000 pinkies or larger (conservatively, and assuming you liberate your breeders soon after they produce) lord knows how many pounds of newsprint or aspen, and how many clean water bowls..... It's the moment you get to find out if these two precious snakes will actually produce for you. If they do you'll almost certainly raise all the offspring personally to have a larger breeding supply in 2 more years.

I guess it'll be a while before that morph hits the street

Ok now my head hurts............................................. ...



can i just buy a couple pair of semi perfect snakes??? Adults???? LoL I will buy as many males as you like......5.1 if need be!! ~<

So, 5 years into the project, 40 mice, 20,000 pinkies or larger (conservatively, and assuming you liberate your breeders soon after they produce) lord knows how many pounds of newsprint or aspen, and how many clean water bowls..... It's the moment you get to find out if these two precious snakes will actually produce for you. If they do you'll almost certainly raise all the offspring personally to have a larger breeding supply in 2 more years.

I guess it'll be a while before that morph hits the street.

Yes, and when people look at your price tag and say something like "$300 for a CORN SNAKE?!?!? No way!", they won't understand why you leaped over the table screaming like a mad man and stomped on them.

If any of you have never been a vendor at a herp show, but intend to sometime in the future, practice biting your tongue REAL HARD for a few weeks before you do so. They can be an incredible test of your self control and composure.

Sorry Rich I hate to say it, but I have you toped!!!!! Try being a costopmer service rep at Toys-R-Us throughout the Christmas Holidays!! LOL

I resemble that remark, Rich! Customer quote "what do you mean, "why don't I just give them away"". Another customer quote "my child's only got $10 can't you come down a little more?" Gotta love vending those herp shows. By the way Rich will we be hating ourselves together at the Richmond Virginia show in November? IMHO

Tim - sure makes you glad that people can't read minds!

So far, I don't have plans to do the Richmond show. My setup is geared for 8 foot tables and they only provide 6 footers at the show. We did fair at that show last year, but with having Connie having to tackle someone trying to steal one of her leopard geckos off of our tables and Jennifer Curran passing a bad check on us, the show left a real bad taste in our mouths.

Plus Richmond is a 13+ hour drive for us, and just doing a one day show is hardly worth that kind of drive time.

Take care.