It's time, once again, to make matches and hatch babies. In an effort to do better than last year I have started to compile data.
First I needed to see who I have in my breeding pool and what their collective breeding history is. To do this I got a little compulsive. I posted pics of all current snakes and their lineage suing various color wires to track the original breeding pairs. I wish I could have used 2 colors per individual and tracked which half of each set of genetics went where but I have no way of knowing so it's one color per unrelated set of genes (hard to see in the pic). It's not ideal, but it's as accurate as I could get with simple observation.
This was an eye opening graphic of how inbred these animals are. To test the simple recessive traits I need a larger unrelated breeding pool and the ability to raise many more animals. To be honest, I'm not willing to commit to that.
However, this did show me who had not bred, or who had not yet been paired for breeding so this year I concentrated on the "unknown known".
I warmed early, fed more and waited for all the females to cycle through a pre-ovulation shed. So, I'm hoping for good results. The only "iffy" pairing involve the youngest snakes.
In related news, I am working on the quarterly update for the 2016 color change comparison but several of the babies where still in shed. I hope to get that done next week end. Until then put this image of my 2010 male next to any Texas rat snake you've ever seen.
