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My anxiety level is through the roof!

Christen

Christen

New member
So I am going to make you suffer with me (insert evil laugh here).

So background story

I had acquired this guy from another breeder. He came from a tessera breeding but because of the motley there was no way to tell without breeding that he is in fact a motley tessera. So anyway I love testing hets so why not he come here? As a baby I was convinced that he was a tessera. Even in his motley circles he had the tess line with white outline on either side (wish I got a pic of that but never did) but as he grew I began to doubt as he was looking more and more like just a plain ole motley. Then this year came when he was old enough to breed. The eggs have been incubating for 75, 76 now days. The first one pipped last night.

So we are testing a few things here. Obviously is he a tessera and he is possible het caramel and anery. So I have bred him with my butter (proven to not be het motley) who is het anery and charcoal. So now the fun begins.

Here is Jester as a baby.
jesterbaby.JPG

He is Jester when he is a little older.

jesteradult.jpg

First baby pipping. Not a great picture. I promise I will get better. Unfortunately this baby appears to be a normal amel. So nothing proved with this kid. 8 more eggs to go

jesterclutch1.jpg
 
Sounds like an excellent suspense story, Christen! I'll be waiting. The pip picture is very cute, if not revealing. :)
 
Wow, he's gotten big since I last saw him! I'm really looking forward to seeing what you get, even if he isn't tessera.
 
One baby out. Didn't sex it yet but it appears to be female. Two more babies pipped. Another little amel and what appears to be butter. Not doing the happy dance just yet but it looks like just maybe. So far everything appears to be normal pattern. So it isn't looking good for the tess but we still have some more eggs to go.
 

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She isn't as bright as the picture showed. I will get some true to life pictures once everyone is out. These amels certainly won't be as bright as the amels I usually make. ;)
 
Gratz on the clutch. I'll give you some of my luck so far. Just a little cause I still need it
 
qtken2 said:
Gratz on the clutch. I'll give you some of my luck so far. Just a little cause I still need it
Click to expand...

Thanks! Yeah you might still need it. A couple more have pipped. So far the count it 2 butters and the rest amels all normal pattern. So it is looking like my boy is just a motley. I think there are 4 more eggs to go so the possibility isn't completely gone but I am not liking the odds at this point.
 
Well... We have all butters and amel! So we proved the caramel but not anery. With the small clutch size and het to het I am not going to rule that out just yet. However we did not hatch one tessera so my boy is not a Tess motley just a cool looking motley. I will work on getting pictures once the remaining three finally come out of their eggs. This has been the slowest clutch ever to pip and exit the egg. Babies are just happy in their eggs. They are a beautiful and big clutch of babies though.
 
Cool babies and good for you to help gather info on tessera motleys- it's good to see breeding trials being done of motley snakes from tessera parents. I had 2 motleys and one stripe from my tessera pairing and I have all 3 of them still.
 
I wonder if there should be a thread somewhere about Believed/Possible Tessera Motleys and Stripes, and what they eventually proved out as. That way, someday, there will be enough examples to be able to predict what hatchlings are more accurately.
 
I'm not confident in completely ruling tessera out genotypically. Phenotypically I don't recall any of the supposed motley tesseras looking like yours, particularly with what Nanci is hinting at about everyone's believed/possible animals.

I say this going off of a recent clutch I had hatch. I paired my current only mature male tessera to a granite. Of 11 fertile eggs, I hatched 1 normal tessera, 1 hypo (surprise! my tessera het butter stripe is het hypo too), and 9 normal corns. So looking just at the tessera mutation, 1 tessera and 10 non-tessera. I definitely wasn't expecting that given the almost 50/50 tessera to non-tessera ratio I got from last year's clutches.
 
Has anyone actually proved a snake that is motley in appearance (no belly checkers, motley dorsal pattern) to also be tessera- Someone must have at some point as we are calling these motleys "possible tesseras", right?
I agree there really should be a thread about this.
 
Walter somewhat started a thread about it and it got some traction. This was more in regards to stripe and tessera though. I've been sidelined from at the time of my replies in that thread going through interviews, getting the job, moving, and then being consumed with being a newbie within a completely different career field than my knowledge and education. I do want to answer the conundrum that is tessera as the mutation greatly intrigues me. Unfortunately I'm a returning player to corns and that trait. With the lack of $$$ and available virgin subadult and adult tesseras out there it makes genetic breeding test a little slow for myself. Nevermind that these guys aren't like leopard geckos where I can have a given season's offspring adult size, if not breeding at 8-9 months of age (I never did the breeding that young though, I always waited til 1 year, which usually put my animals breeding at 2nd season or around 18 months old).

That said, I intend to be a little more observant this season on what tesseras I have pop out (no motley genes to my knowledge for this season) and see if I can work towards pinpointing key traits. What throws a wrench into things are the likes of Lynea's wide-striped okeetee tesseras and then even Don, this season, has posted "typical" and wide striped tessera siblings within SotD.
 
I will say I am more confident that my "striped possible tessera" will turn out to be a tessera as opposed to my "motley possible tesseras" which look like any motley to me.
Christen did say something interesting about Jester in post #1,
Even in his motley circles he had the tess line with white outline on either side
Click to expand...
I've seen a lot of variation on the patterns of motleys but I'd be interested to know more about this or any markers on the side.
 
Jen, take my breeding last year of Peppermint Stripe x Tessera. The tessera was sold as heterozygous amel, heterozygous stripe. Well, I got ZERO amels, and a bunch of babies that I was like, WTF is that??? Oh- motley. I never hatched a motley before :) So out of those however many motleys, statistically, 50% should also be tessera. There were also quite definite tesseras. I wonder if I posted the pics...

Here's the thread. Keep in mind that as these hatched, I didn't now that the female was NOT heterozygous stripe or amel. I'm going to have to go read it and see how much of a dumb-ass I was...

edit: not too bad! So- there are tesseras, normals, and motleys. Statistically, some of those motleys should be tesseras. Doesn't mean they are! I have no idea where they are now. Carol had them all, and most likely they were sold overseas.
 
ghosthousecorns said:
Cool babies and good for you to help gather info on tessera motleys- it's good to see breeding trials being done of motley snakes from tessera parents. I had 2 motleys and one stripe from my tessera pairing and I have all 3 of them still.
Click to expand...

You know for some reason testing hets seems to much more fun to me than making the first and latest and greatest morph. I have actually debated a couple times on contacting you and having you send me your possibles.

Nanci said:
I wonder if there should be a thread somewhere about Believed/Possible Tessera Motleys and Stripes, and what they eventually proved out as. That way, someday, there will be enough examples to be able to predict what hatchlings are more accurately.
Click to expand...

I think there should be. I have another motley from a tess breeding that I am planning on breeding next year. I am interested to see how he grows up and makes me doubt the tess like Jester did. His colors are so vivid and crisp but it seems that tessera does that even to the normal hatchlings so we shall see.
 
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