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Old 12-19-2018, 06:46 PM   #26
ecreipeoj
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rich Z View Post
Just to clarify a detail concerning the history of the Caramel gene.

The original animal that produce the Caramel gene for me was a wild caught NORMAL looking adult female purchased from a pet shop in Cape Coral, Florida. The reason I purchased this animal out of all the rest there was because of it's unusual straw colored background color. I discussed the source of the animals with the owner who verified that those were all wild caught animals brought in from local collectors. Matter of fact, a friend of mine, Tim Hoen, was with me at the time we visited that pet shop. What was interesting was that we both looked into that tank with the corn snakes, and both said "Wow! Look at that one!" at the same time, but reached in and grabbed two different animals that caught our eyes. His did not catch my eye, and mine did not catch his eye. People just see different things in animals, I guess. I was looking for corns to use in breeding projects based on their color combined with, at that time, the ONLY color altering genes available for the corn snake: Amelanism and Anerythrism. I don't believe that Bill and Kathy Love had come up with Hypomelanism yet at that time.

Anyway, the inferred theory posted in this thread that the animal could have been from a captive breeding program sort of falls apart when the fact is realized that there was never another animal offered or known of similar in appearance to the Caramel gene prior to my producing the original Caramels and Butters.

Could the pet shop owner have been lying to me about the source of that animal? Certainly! Quite frankly, unless you catch an animal yourself out in the wild, you are always going to be at the mercy of the honesty of the person selling you an animal as to it's actual and truthful source. And had other Caramel looking animals shown up in the market around the same time, I would have to say that this would be pretty clear evidence of the possibility of a parallel breeding project being done by another breeder working with this uncovered gene. But since that did not happen, to the best of my knowledge, I feel pretty safe in saying that I believe that pet shop owner's story. If there is evidence otherwise, I am all ears....

So, I had bred that wild caught female carrier with a snow corn in the hopes that from an area nearby known for wild caught Anerythristics, perhaps anerythrism was lurking in her gene pool. And I also wanted to see what that straw colored background would do when combined with Amelanism. All normals hatched out, which at the time seemed unfortunate, but I kept several anyway and when I bred THEM together, that is when I hatched out what I eventually named the "Caramel Corns" and the "Butter Corns".

Of course, I did testing with that Caramel gene to Anerythrism to make certain that it just was not an odd variation of Anerythrism. The Caramel corns were only slightly different looking than Anerythristic at hatching, so it actually took a few sheds before I realized they could possibly be something different. As for the Butter Corns, well, I just though that the yellowish looking ones were a result of the straw colored background that existed in the original female that produced this line. Honestly, I came VERY close to selling off the entire batch of them before I realized that I had something very different.
Sounds good to me.

Back then, Visual Selecting new looking phenotypes, was the method you used, as I remember. We didn't figure out the genetics of many of our current Mutant genes, one at a time, as they were discovered.

I bought quite a few Corn Snakes from you, such as Lavenders, Opals, Crimsons, Butter Motleys and Striped Butters, just to name a few. I produced the first Striped Lavender, from Lavenders I produced from you, and the first Striped Opals, the same way.

I learned more and more about the genetics of our Corns, each and every year, I have been breeding them. When I bred a Amel Striped X Lavender, I produced lots of different phenotypes of Amels het Striped Lavender and "Normals" het Striped Amel Lavender.

When I bred Amel het Striped Lavender x Normal het Striped Opal, I saw many different phenotypes, that are reproducible today, but did it register completely? Not really.

I lucked into the Lava gene from Okeetees. I figured out how to create new combines, so I bred a Lava Okeetee x Butter Motley and Lava Okeetee X Striped Butter. The results surprised me, but revealed a lot.

The resulting F1 crosses produced "Normals" het Lava Butter Motley and "Normals" het Lava Striped Butter. My Lava Okeetees were changed in F1 to Borderless RedCoat Yellow Jackets het Lava Butter Motley and so on.

Was the Tessera gene the first Dominant gene discovered and described in our Corns, no way. I have produced much better threads than this about my results, no blame is expressed or implied.

If you selectively breed a mutant gene such as Lavender, Motley, Caramel, Butter and so on and on, you may never see what genes you are visually selecting for.

Is Border-less and Yellow Jacket as I have described many times on this forum, and The Source dominant genes? Absolutely, Did Rich Z knowingly, do anything other than visually selectively breed his Corns, to produce new phenotypes. We all used the Corn Snakes that were available to us, and believed what we were told about their histories.

I was involved in the Hypo Test Breeding Project, due discovering the Lava Gene. Chuck Pritzel finished off my understanding of Corn Snake Genes and how they are inherited, and I have never slowed down from there.

My Truth may not agree with yours, but there is much to learn about Corn Snake Genetics. I blame the Border-less gene on "Sunglows" which were produced with Hypos, but the Hypo gene is not needed to produce Border-less Amels, just the Border-less gene.

Just because the Border-less gene and Yellow Jacket genes are dominant, dose not mean that they can not be selectively bred out of lines. Het Dom x Het Dom, and 1 in 4 does not carry the gene, but you have to have this in mind.

If you breed any line that is het Border-less, and like what it does to pattern of Motley, soon you will have homo Border-less Butter Motleys. If you like what YJ does to Butter and so on, you can end up with homo Border-less YJ Butter Motleys easily. If you like what RC YJ and Border-less does to the Phenotype of Butter Motleys, then that is what you will end up by visually selecting your results.

Can you see Caramels as Het? No, but you can see YJ as het, so a het YJ Caramel will look very yellow. Yellow Jacket has changed just about every Corn Snake Phenotype we have to a lighter Phenotype. Didn't everybody keep back the lighter looking phenotypes in clutches back then.

Are Lavenders, YJ Mochas, I believe so. Are Pewters, YJ Charcoal Bloods, I believe so. The list goes on and on.

Why did I call them Yellow Jackets, because I have been stung by them, and since it is a dominant gene, when it is in your mix, it has an effect on just about everything. The same is true of Border-less.

These two dominant genes have been in our Corn Snake Gene Pool ever since I have breed Corns, long before we learned much about the genetics of our Corns.

Until Chuck Pritzel, Corn Snake Genetics was a little confusing, but I have learn much since then, LIKE:

It is impossible for me to be Politically Correct, if my truth differs from the results I see in my clutches.

I took 5 hours the other day and did some searches on this cite. I searched for Tessera and Palmetto and selected the most views and then the most posts. I read through all of them, and I see a lot of Politically Correct Post.

I will admit, that I have respectfully disagreed with many "Truths" about our Corn Snake Gens, and have received the same treatment as Trump, by the Drive By Media.

Who proved out what a Motley Tesesra is? Me. It was called a Striped Tessera for a long time. How did I figure it out, because I understand what alleles are.

I do not believe our Corn Snakes are "Pure" Corn, ever since I have been breeding Corns, but it is not the "Politically Correct" Truth, and you may respectfully disagree or hate me, but I can figure out problems and questions about just about anything like no other.

My search for Truth has caused problems in all aspects of my life. Everybody HATES to be told their truth may be wrong, and everybody HATES it even more when you try to correct them.

I have been wrong about many things in my life, mainly by just believing my teachers. When I learned that much of what I believed was false and flipped it over to the truth, it changes your life.