Hypo - That Nasty 4-Letter Word!

[Susan]

Rich has said it more times than can be counted, and now he has me saying it. I was fine with all the snakes from breeders, including Rich, that had hypo. I could spot those hypo hatchlings as soon as they pipped. Then I got a few more from Rich....

My first contact with Rich's nasty 4-letter word was with the results of what seemed like a simple pairing. I bred a ghost motley to an amber. The ghost motley was one of my F2 hatchlings that I had bred several times before with typical results and the amber was a first-timer I had raised since a hatching from Serpenco. There entire clutch hatched out looking like normals, not the bright/light hatchlings I had always seen with hypos. It took many months before the one I had kept to even start to show signs of being a dark hypo.

Photos as they appear:
Ghost Motley mother
Amber father
Hatchling after first shed
Hatchling a year later

 

[Susan]

The next couple of years have resulted with my usual hypo hatchlings. I lost both the amber father and hypo offspring.

Now it's 2012 and a pair of hypos het lavender Sunkissed I purchased as yearlings at Rich's table his last year in the corn snake business have produced their first clutch of eggs!

So far, the results are not exactly what I was expecting.

Here are the parents:
Female as a yearling (in blue) soon after purchase.
Male as a yearling soon after purchase.
Male 6 months later.
Female 6 months later.
Female at 3 years old.

 

[Susan]

OK, yes, they are not as bright as some hypos, but for the most part, they looked like hypos, even if their belly checks did seem a bit darker than I usually see.

 

[Susan]

Well, I knew one of their eggs had pipped last nght but I had to wait until after work today to actually check on it's progress. What I saw when I moved the moss away seemed odd. The lighting was not the best (hubby dislikes putting more than a 40 watt single bulb into any light fixture), so I grabbed a flashlight and looked again. The hatchling was partway out of it's egg and looked just like an anery! NOT an expected hypo, hypo lavender, hypo Sunkissed or hypo orchid! I gave it some time, and when I finally got to check again after dinner, I found a sibling had just exited it's egg and was able to get some photos of both before sexing them and putting them in their deli cups.

Under the light of the flash, I could probably say that first hatchling might be a ghost, although the darkest ghost I have ever hatched out. It's a male, and is slightly kinked (Murphy really hates me). The last photo is an example of the typical ghost I hatch out.

 

[Susan]

At least the second hatchling is definitely Sunkissed! But an anery Sunkissed? Wouldn't the addition of Sunkissed to the morph of the other hatchling make it at least a little lighter? Oh, and this is a female and no kinks! Something good anyway!

And if that is supposed to be lavender, and a hypo lavender at that, it's the weirdest lavender I've ever seen!

 

[Susan]

The thread is unlocked now! Thanks for your patience!

 

[AliCat37]

What a headache!! At least they're cool snakes

 

[snakepunk]

They don't look lavender to me. The eyes are too dark.

Maybe dilute anery?

 

[Tom Tuttle]

Susan Congrats on the amazing looking sunkissed!!:cheers:
It looks anery lavender to me. Don't you love hidden hets?

 

[Susan]

Susan Congrats on the amazing looking sunkissed!!:cheers:
It looks anery lavender to me. Don't you love hidden hets?

I did finally get a chance to look at moonstone photos and you may be right, although mine seem a little dark, but that may be because they are pre-shed. But where is the hypo that both parents are supposed to be homozygous for? I also looked at lavender ghost photos and they sure aren't that light! I know that hypos have a wide range of color, but I have hatched out hypos every year since starting in corn snakes and except for the 2 clutches I've mentioned, they all have looked fairly the same as hatchlings as well as like the hypos I see everyone else post.

I'm really beginning to think that there may be something else going on. Rich noticed the inconsistencies, hence his considering "hypo" a dirty word. We have "recently" discovered that hypo has an allele with strawberry. Plus, we have all those other hypo-type genes. Who can say that there isn't another gene involved somewhere, one that when in homozygous form and in the presence of homozygous hypo, doesn't affect the phenotype. But when you add strawberry, even in het form, that gene becomes activated and drastically reduces the hypomelanistic effect of hypo/strawberry or strawberry/strawberry on the phenotype. I know I'm stretching and grasping, but something like that could explain why the pairing of 2 phenotypically hypomelanistic snakes can result in offspring, even an entire clutch, that look nothing like their parents.

My head hurts now so I guess it's time to clean and feed rodents.

 

[Rich Z]

:laugh:

You have NO idea how much of a headache that caused me. Seriously, I was thinking strongly that there must be a gene that neutralizes hypo with the results I got sometimes. I would breed FULL 100 PERCENT ABSOLUTELY NO DOUBT ABOUT IT Crimsons together and get normal colored animals. I kept a bunch of those normal colored babies and bred them together thinking I should statistically get 1 in 16 that would be a combo of two different types of hypo, but such was not the case. I would get 1 in 4 Crimsons, just like you would if you were dealing with a single heterozygous Hypo gene. So why did both parents LOOK like full blooded Crimsons and then somehow have that hypo gene revert back to where the babies were merely het for it? Or was Murphy's Law just pulling my strings again?

And as for Lavender and Hypo........ :crazy02: For YEARS I never got a female from my Hypo Lavender project, or so it seemed. Eventually I began to think that Hypo was being sex linked when combined with Lavender, as only the males seemed to express that gene. I no sooner started coming to that conclusion then I start getting females that looked just as good as the males. So what changed? Beats the hell out of me. But SOMETHING was definitely toying with me.

So then I threw other genes into the mix. :laugh:

:noevil:

I'm glad I got out of this when I did. I found out recently that Excedrin Migraine has been pulled from the marketplace. That would have been the end for me, for certain, by now.

 

[Susan]

I'm glad I got out of this when I did. I found out recently that Excedrin Migraine has been pulled from the marketplace. That would have been the end for me, for certain, by now.

But getting the odd Percocet tablet in your bottle would have made it not quite so bad!

Luckily for me, the generics work just fine, but I still have almost a full 50ct bottle of Excedrin Migraine. Maybe a could make a few dollars by selling some of it! Hmmm.......

 

[RobbiesCornField]

WHAT!? Why did I not know about this?! Now I'm going to have to go through all of my Excedrin Migraine bottles to check for odd tablets. :grin01:

 

[ecreipeoj]

They don't look lavender to me. The eyes are too dark.

Maybe dilute anery?

They look like Blues to me too. The parents look more like Dilutes than Hypos. Their shed skins should reveal if they are Dilutes or not.

 

[dionythicus]

I sure don't miss those day of "what the heck is that?" when you know for certain what it should be.

 

[snakepunk]

Blue Sunkissed? That would be a first.

 

[ghosthousecorns]

LOL I love that saying (4 letter word)
I have a few different lines of hypo here and I don't really try to sort them out so much as long as they produce hypos with each other, but have had people tell me a couple of my snakes look like they have ultra, strawberry this and that. I have a miami female from carol I could have sworn was not het hypo and has produced a normal hatchling this year that is drastically lighter than the normal siblings, but darker than the rest of the hypo around here, at certain point I give up. Iif I am in doubt when it comes to light normal/ dark hypo I just call it a normal and someone gets a hell of a good deal.

 

[Susan]

Blue Sunkissed? That would be a first.

Actually, Walter has already hatched some of those already and even has motley in the mix. I have been drooling over them for awhile now!

 

[Susan]

They look like Blues to me too. The parents look more like Dilutes than Hypos. Their shed skins should reveal if they are Dilutes or not.

I'll definitely try to check the shed skins of not only the parents, but of the two hatchlings in question. Well, make that 3 hatchlings as a few more have hatched out, all normals, but one looks lighter than the others on it's front half. And that last two just hatched out...a definite anery and I think a lavender.

I bred the male to another female, a normal het hypo Sunkissed lavender (proven for all those hets) and her clutch is due to hatch within the next week, so it will be very interesting to see what hatches out. It might at least tell me one way or the other if the male is hypo or het hypo, Murphy willing.