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Laymens Genetics Question

S

snakes4ever

New member
I once had a normal brownish cornsnake and bought it a orange colored girlfriend. THey mated and since then we sold them and kept one baby. The baby turned out to be a boy. We sold all the snakes except one baby. Shouldent that baby had been "het" for something?

Since the baby grew up we got it a nother orange girlfriend and the just hatched this second batch of which today is 4 more babys. But they are all comeing out dark brown. I thought if you had a het cornsnake and bred it with a full orange that he may have been het for. THen some of the baby's would have been orange. WHat did I do wrong?

Could the mothers have been 2 different types of orange? Meaning that word that sounds like "amalenistic" and one local petstore said that this mother is a "creamsickle" cornsnake. Could the 2 oranges canceld eachother out?

Just in case this did not make any sence I will try to make a family tree:

orange1
+Brown1
---------
1baby

orange2
+1baby
--------
16 baby brown snakes as of right now.

shouldent "1baby" have been het for orange when it grew up mate with a nother orange? Or could "orange1" and "orange2" have been 2 different types of orange?
 
Hi,

It depends as you say on what kind of orange the two females were (orange 1 and orange 2 - cute names by the way!). If orange 1 were amelanistic, and she were mated to a normal cornsnake (assuming the "brown" cornsnake was normal), you're right in assuming the babies would ALL be het for amelanistic (amel for short). So if baby 1 were bred with orange 2 and orange 2 were another amel, the babies should be 50% amel, 50% normal het for amel. Having said that of course it is possible that, just by chance, all the babies would be normals het for amel, like, say with humans having in theory a 50% chance of having a boy baby, 50% of having a girl, yet some families seem to consist only of girls or only boys, maybe by chance or maybe by some mechanism we don't fully understand. Fascinating stuff, genetics!

Anyway, back to the point, if orange 1 is amel and orange 2 is creamsicle as you were told in the shop, if you breed a normal male corn het for amel with a creamsicle female, I'm pretty sure all the babies will look like normal corns because a creamsicle is a speciality breed with a great plains rat snake somewhere in its genes (grandparent I think, could be wrong). So the most probable reason I would say is that your two orange females are different morphs.

Hope that helps and I haven't totally confused you!

Jessica :)
 
Thank you...

Wow, I was not sure if I was makeing any sence when I was trying to explain my snakes family tree. hehee You hit the nail right on the head. The only thing I know for sure about the 2 orange parents is that orange1 and orange2 both had redish eyes. And there were no traces of brown in any of the 2 femail mom's. Thanks again bud. Thanks for your time. I just checked my hovabater and another baby showed up. So now I have 17 baby's in one 20 gal. fish tank that I made a screen lid for. I need to get them seperated. THere is one more egg that has to hatch and I think I may have moved it around to much. I hope the snake still hatches out. It just dont want to hatch. danget! :)
 
Ok, here is another question going back to amel x amel, (keep in mind I just started trying to learn this genetics stuff last ngiht) if both were homozygots(is that right) being aa and aa respectively, wouldn't all the babies be aa too? or where would the Aa come in? ( if the aa and Aa thing doest make sense, i am using a reference from Serpentine Widgets genetics site here: http://serpwidgets.com/Genetics/genetics.html) Aa being normal het amel. I know this is all theory and I probably am just confusing myself but thats my question.
 
You're right. The kinds of color genes are:

A = normal black pigment (normal corn)
a = amelanistic (no black pigment)

But cornsnakes have two genes for color, and are one of the following (simplified to talk only about this morph of course, not counting striped genes, hypomelanism which are separate etc).

AA = normal corn
Aa = normal corn carrying genes for amelanism (it will look normal because A is dominant over a)
aa = amelanistic corn

So if you breed an amelanistic to a normal corn carrying genes for amelanism:

aa x Aa = 50% Aa, 50% aa

Breeding two amels:

aa x aa = 100% aa - no A genes to pass on. This is how Kathy Love managed to selectively breed so many morphs, by, say, keeping breeding amels with particularly pronounced white bands round the blotches together to produce reverse okeetees etc.

I find it hard to explain this properly without a Punnett square, but Serpwidgets is the sort of thing to read!

Jessica :)
 
Thanks for the clariffication, that is what i figured but i wanted someone who actually knows what they are talking about to confirm. :cheers:
 
Jessica71
==============================================
So if you breed an amelanistic to a normal corn carrying genes for amelanism:

aa x Aa = 50% Aa, 50% aa
==============================================

:bang: In the 18 I am now a parent to. Not one of them looks orange! DANGET. And after reading The cornsnake manuel by that "Love" lady and husband. I cant recall if the current dad's mom had dark eyes or or redish eyes like the current mom has. But if both moms had the redish eyes that would meen they are both amelanistic and and the current dad should be Aa and the current mom should be aa. So if aa x Aa = 50% Aa, 50% aa then this mom must have been a different type of orange cornsnake. Or the dad corn must not have been lucky enough to cary the genes that I was hopeing to get out of this batch.

I wish I would have been more into my pets when I bought them. I would have got more on there history before I bought the first parents that gave birth to the current dad of the 18 babys that I now own. :shrugs:
 
Hold on.

Before this discussion goes any further we need to start using correct terminology, instead of 'brown cornsnake' and 'orange cornsnake'. I understand that this might be new and you might not have a good understanding of genetics, but saying brown or orange corns is so vague nobody here could give you any type of idea.

Go to any of the big 3's website (www.serpenco.com , www.cornsnake.net , or www.cornutopia.com) and look to see which snakes you had.

After you do that we'll have a better understanding of what you're talking about.

Orange to some people can mean a bright hypo or an amel, or just a very nice normal corn.

Anyway you can get pictures?
 
Joejr14 said:
Hold on.

Before this discussion goes any further we need to start using correct terminology, instead of 'brown cornsnake' and 'orange cornsnake'. I understand that this might be new and you might not have a good understanding of genetics, but saying brown or orange corns is so vague nobody here could give you any type of idea.
Click to expand...

amelanistic would be the girl snake and the boy is darker then most commin snakes but I think that had to do with the fact he was crossed with a nother possable amelanistic. But I cant recall if her eyes were redish or if she had more white with her orange paterns. I found a photo of the current mom snake. How can I post it in this forum?
 
And before we go any further still...if you breed a normal het amel corn to a creamsicle corn, you should get approximately 50% creamsicles (amel). If your current female is a creamsicle, then ALL of the babies should be sold as having emoryi blood!
 
Thanks for that info - in my research on breeding different morphs (basically reading Kathy Love's books and a little on the internet, nothing in depth), I hadn't come across what was produced on breeding a normal het for amel with a creamsicle. I have one of those corn morph predictor programs, but it only talks about corn snakes, not creamsicles; and I assumed since it is quite a specialist morph and includes emoryi blood that it would be recessive when bred with a normal, like the various corn morphs. But I suppose just the fact that it is not really a corn makes it all different. Thanks. :)
 
Not that good of a picture

I had to dig through 3 different shoe boxes of pictures, just to find this picture I took of my current snake parents when she was haveing her first litter. And before anyone chews me out by the condition of the glass bottum being on the girls belly. Lets just say they caught me off guard and I later put in a nesting box. And at this time I did not want to disturb her at all.

I hope this picture can help you guys help me identify the snakes. I feel :shrugs: because I cant find any other pictures. But I will get some more by the end of this week.

Now lets see if I learned how to add this picture to this forum.

nope.

My server dont let me do remote hosting of images. So here is a link to the only picture I have at this time. And I am sure I dont have to tell you what snake is the girl. ;)


DO NO CLICK ON THIS LINK​
Cut & Past it​


It will not work if you click on the link. danget. I think you have to copy and past it into your address bar. Sorry... I just started it so I could try and put a picture on this message board
 
Yes, easy to see which one is female isn't it?! Poor old girl - did she pass them all ok?

She is certainly amel of some variety, because you say she had pink eyes and the borders of her dorsal blotches are white and not black. I would be tempted to say she is a normal amel rather than a creamsicle, but others will have other views I'm sure. The male looks like a normal corn, from what I can see of him. :)
 
Maybe she is a creamsicle - can't make my mind up! Looked at her again and she doesn't have much red on her, just oranges, which would suggest creamsicle. But then it is difficult to tell from a photo. She just didn't look too much like other creamsicles I've seen - but they do vary.
 
If she was sold as a creamsicle keep her labeled as a creamsicle. A creamsicle is a hybrid between a great plains ratsnake and a cornsnake and is also amel. It is important to represent the babies as to what they are and not mislead people (even accidentally).

~Katie
 
Jessica71 said:
Yes, easy to see which one is female isn't it?! Poor old girl - did she pass them all ok?
Click to expand...

Jessica71, I know I know. The day she got knocked up :crazy02: the first time, She was at my parents and they called me over to take care of them. By that time she was almost due. I put a nesting container in there towards the end but because of the lack of humidity and heating she only gave us like 6 eggs and some ofthem were pink, others collapsed and then towards the end fungus started spreading through the rest of the eggs. At that time I was a lot less informed on raising and incabating eggs then I am today. Thanks to everyone who has ever taken the time to respond to some strangers posting in this forum. But that picture was taken last year. This current batch I made it a point to spoil her. And with her living in my room I have slept in a room ware I have a portable heater and try to keep the temperature in the room at almost 80*F.

My friends who are not into reptiles make fun of me because I sleep in a room that is warm just to make it easy on my pet reptile. But just like the young children in our lives and on this planet. The only life our kids, dogs, cats, and other pets have, is the life we let them have. And ware you and I have a choice on how we want to live. Our pets and children don't. So evin though that picture shows that she did not have the best setup for breeding. Her current batch of 18/18 hatchlings speaks for itself. ;)

I will work on getting more photos of the parents and baby's. The boy was supposed to be het for amel. Because the parents he came from was a normal corn and another orange eyed and boddied femail. OK I think I am running on at the mouth(keyboard) SO I guess I will stop right....... Now :) Thank you everyone and Jessica71.
 
No problem. 18/18 is fantastic - you have obviously done your research! I'm just hoping my first clutch hatches in a few weeks - the moment of truth...

I quite agree with you about giving kids and pets the best we can. I enjoy making sure my snakes are ok. We've had a bit of a heatwave in the UK recently and yesterday I came home from work at lunchtime to check the snakes' temperatures weren't too hot. They still have a heater, but it's not working too hard at present; the thermostat just kicks in all the time. It still ends up being a bit warmer though. Don't worry if people think you're silly - they don't understand how unbelievably cute and lovable these little creatures are. People will say to me "uurggghh, snakes?" and I tell them how silky and sweet they are, how they touch you with their little tongues, but people don't understand until they see them. My friends who have held the snakes really like them. Where do you live by the way?
 
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