"corn soup"

I have the old and new corn snake manuals by Kathy Love and this paragraph is on p 122 of the older book "The corn snake manual", and the same passage, though rewritten, is in the afterword in her newer version of the book Corn Snakes: The comprehensive owners Guide on p.217 . For those who have neither book, this is part of what it says (concerning the combination of a lot of different morphs together)

Some have expressed the concern that the end concoction might resemble the same outcome as when we whimsically scribbled all our crayons into one thick, gummy brown smudge- resulting in a nondescript (and not very attractive) corn snake with the appeal of burnt toast.

I always liked this (Thanks for writing it, Kathy) and it stuck in my mind, so when I saw another post today advising against combining a w/c with too many morphs, I got my books to look it up. I do like multi morph combos, but what happens when you put too much in the mix? Is it true more is not always better, or would a snake with every morph but the kitchen sink be attractive? Of course, some genes would mask other ones, but would it really be a burnt toast corn?

Great topic, Jen!

I don't really have an answer to the "burnt toast corn", but I can see exactly where you're coming from and it's an interesting thing to ponder.

For example, I love my Diffuseds! You of all people know that.
I have a snake though, Olive, my Phantom girl, that I'm really glad is just a phantom with nothing else. I think Diffused added to the mix would detract from her beauty.

Hrm... there are just so many corn snake morphs.. I can't decide if a "corn soup" corn would be very light or very dark. Colorful or on the anerythristic side? Considering that snakes who are double and tripple homo for traits are increasingly beautiful to us (or perhaps that's just because they are "newer"), I think a Corn of all morphs could very well be a beauty.

That said, it seems that all that un planned cohabbing would get you would be handful after handful of Normals..

Geeze there are so many topics rolled into one in this thread! Definitely room for tangents.

I would imagine that the more traits involved, the lighter the snake would be. Maybe there would be some light pinks and yellows? Once you combine Amel and Anery, it's all downhill (or uphill, depending on your preference) from there. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so who knows? You also have to take into consideration pattern traits, especially how motley looks versus stripe in morphs. I'm sure we'll see some new quadruple, quintuple and sextuple gene combinations over the next couple of years, so I guess we'll have to wait and see...

Well, if you think of what some of the gene combos look like and how certain genes mask others, a corn that is homozygous for all of the currently known genes will most likely be a light peachy cream colored snake with a crazy pattern. How do I get this you ask? Well, we know that each individual gene has a certain look, but we also know that certain gene combinations result in whitish snakes (amel + anery = snow, amel + charcoal = blizzard, amel = lavender = opal).

However, since we are using ALL the known genes, you have to add ultra into the mix, and since you can't have a snake homozygous for both amel and ultra, the closest thing would be an ultramel. Ultramel anerys and ultramel charcoals are light ghostly snakes. Adding other genes, such as lavender, caramel and cinder will probably add some pinkish/peachy coloration (caramel lavenders, amber lavenders, peppermints, buttermints are all light but with various amounts of pinky/peachy color), yellow may or may not be present (caramel to increase yellow, lavender to add some peachy, cinder might reduce yellow - buttermint).

Now add some other genes...hypo A and strawberry (again, have to be one of each gene) will add some pink, but just how much with the other genes present is unknown. Dilute will soften the color. Adding Sunkissed will possibly lighten the color a bit and possibly bring some more yellow in (Sunkissed + other hypos have a compounded lightening), but will also affect with the pattern because we will be adding motley/stripe (again, one of each so we won't see the dot/dash of a Sunkissed stripe but Sunkissed motleys are different), but add diffuse, and with cinder, you might have that "cracked" pattern and then add tessera to really alter the pattern. And adding terrazzo and kastanie may have some affect, but probably not much with all the others added in there.

But will we get a brown smudge...I don't think so.

Susan, That makes sense considering the "mystery" lines of peachy pink corns there are. If we could keep amel, anery out of the mix who knows there could be some neat colors show up. But myself I feel once you have so much stuff mixed in there that you can no longer ID the morph of hatchlings without growing them up and doing breeding trials, that's overkill.

I like your rational Susan. Seems logical. But the only hole I see is I have a snake that is anery, amel, diffused, caramel and is basically just a white snake....I don't know whether or not the other genetics would change that. It may have other stuff mixed in. But it is one of Rich's mystery snakes. So will have to play around with breeding trials to figure it all out. But she is really a sweet heart though. Beauty of it is you can pretty much breed her to anything and get what you are looking for.

It seems to me that a great deal of combos ultimately lead to a very pale pink or white colored snake rather than going darker. I think we need more dark genes to even it out lol. Just my thoughts on it.