Sooo cute.
Thanks Jen! That's why we're hooked on hoggies, they are just so darn cute.
Thanks Nanci!
Will there be lots of variation within the clutch, as to how much vanishing the hatchlings have?
You know, that's really the thing. The Anaconda line is so variable, it's really a toss up as to what you might get. Considering that all of the original Anacondas that were sold came from Brent Bumgardner 2 years, I wouldn't say that there's a lot in the means of genetic variability as to what the males are currently passing along, so it has to be the females that are causing a lot of these really interesting vanishing patterns from other collections. That's not to say that Brent hasn't produced some of these same weird patterns himself, but from what I remember, the original stock that he sold in 2008 had a fairly common pattern to them.
I can tell you this, judging from the looks of the 3 Anacondas that I have hatched out so far, there's not a lot of variance between them. There's no doubt that they are indeed Anacondas and it helps to determine this fact that all Anacondas, as I've been told by Brent, have completely solid bellies. I can verify this as fact as both our original Anaconda and our Superconda both have solid bellies and that all of our hatchling Anacondas are exhibiting this trait while the normals from the same clutch are exhibiting the typical checkered bellies.
A fellow hognose breeder and friend of mine in Germany has bred their Anaconda to some of their Toffeebelly morphs and they have produced some very outstanding vanishing pattern Anacondas. Here's a thread he posted on the BLBC site showing off some of his newly hatched Anacondas:
Link
One thing that will be interesting to find out is we just got a second clutch of Anaconda eggs from a Blond female that we bred to our Pink Pastel last year and almost all 6 of those hatchlings have some amount of striping. Here's the best looking one showing off her striping:
If it is in fact the Blond female's genes that is causing this to happen, then I should be able to throw some wild looking Anacondas from that clutch. The only caveat is that since I bred her last year to our PPA, it's possible she might have retained sperm from him and that this clutch might be more het PPA's. But I did see her and our Anaconda physically hooked up, so I've no doubt that she was inseminated by him as well.
In the market, are there people that prefer a lot of pattern, as opposed to vanishing, just like there are people that like striped corns, not vanishing corns?
To be honest, I'm not really sure what people are looking for in the Anacondas but I would probably venture to guess that they are looking for the reduced pattern animals over the atypical ones such as mine since those are the ones that seem to draw more comments on the KS hognose forum. But the genetics are virtually the same for Anacondas, so it basically comes down to personal taste as far as on the looks of the individual. It's not really an issue with me anyways as I'll be holding back all of our Anacondas because their mother is a supposed 100% het Albino. So now I'll try to prove out the het on these guys and hopefully produce some Albino Anacondas.
All in all though, I hope I'm not coming across as being disappointed at all by what we're hatching. That is simply not the case! We're very ecstatic over here about producing our own Anacondas. This is also the first actual visual morph we've produced, so that's exciting in it's own right!
