So I haven’t been posting this winter while the snakes are cooling but a few people are actually reading this stuff and I suppose they deserve some content.
Comment #1 I bought a new phone that takes much better pics. I know that seems counter intuitive. For the last century if you wanted better pics you bought a better camera or lenses…...welcome to the future
comment #2 red phase snakes! Last year I noticed that I had some babies that looked very red indeed (scroll back through past posts for examples of this) but it wasn’t until people started buying them that I realized that they all came from my 2012 snakes…..this made me go back and look. my 2002 snakes gave me my 2006 snakes that gave me the awesome looking hypo melanistic very yellow 2010 snakes.
Those same 2002/2006 snakes gave me a bunch of 2012 snakes
These 2012 snakes are yielding a bunch of very red/lavender snakes. Should I call this another morph? I wish I had great pics of them but in lieu of that…how the hell do I know? FYI: all of the best baby snakes from last year are from 2012 pairings so we’ll know more by July. In the mean time here’s the last of my 2015 snakes who is also the offspring of a pair of 2012 snakes.
This brings us to the last interesting snake of this post. I’ve seen hundreds of baby Texas rat snakes and they all pretty much look the same. But this gal looked weird when she hatched. The margins of her markings were unusually clean and for some reason I kept her.
Now she is an amazing lemon yellow with orange popping up at the head. I have no idea what she’ll yield when I breed her but she’s basically just like her grandfather who started all this.
I wish I had more technical info to give you about which genes cause what in these snakes but I’m basically a post-paleolithic sheep herder keeping the sheep I like and hoping the lambs are like their parents. I guess the unknown is half the fun.