I sold some more snakes recently to a very nice lady who, at one point, asked me how related all these animals are. Despite having put together a comprehensive conspiracy-theroy-esque wall to track lineages I realized I couldn’t work backwards from current animals more than one generation so……..
I started working it out for specific animals and found out I had missed something…...another male had gotten his snake goo into my perfectly in-bred line of weirdos.
Specifically, as I was going back through old spreadsheets I discovered I was wrong about where my 2007 animals came from.
My whole Texas rat snake breeding program kicked off because some white trash kid quit his job and moved out of the trailer park in the middle of the night, His boss called me the next day to say something like “The kid left a mess and I have to clean it up but the landlord won’t go near the trailer because it’s full of snakes.” (I might be mis-remembering this but it’s close enough) The point is, one of these snakes was a skinny, ugly Texas rat snake with a weird white spot on his back. I never could determine whether he was piebald or it was just some sort of injury. I bred him a few times but had no real interesting babies so I forgot about this…until I went back through old spread sheets and realized that some of his progeny are in my in my breeding program.
In previous posts I did a breeding family tree that mislabeled at least one 2007 female as being the offspring of my original 2002 male when, in fact there are two 2007 females who came from this guy that are part of the current bloodline. What follows are the updated breeding family trees.
Worth mentioning, I have confirmed that all the offspring have the same maternal origin. One Eve and two Adams. (Insert joke about my divorce here later)
So, in 2013 the family tree looks more like this:
In the last couple years I’ve been focused on the 2010 & 2012 bloodlines since they are throwing pretty constant traits. The 2010’s are yielding lots of broken patterns (including something kind of mosaic)
The 2012s have lots of reddish/lavender colors (which I kind of like)
but I now I have to look back on years of unimaginative, poorly managed snake breeding and wonder what could have been?
Or not.
It’s pointless to wonder “what if I hadn’t been so stupid in the past” once you realize that future you already knows all the dumb stuff you’re doing right now. Let’s try not to disappoint our future selves by being smarter today!
So, what is the state of my breeding program?
Well, I have four pairs of breeding adults:
1) The 2006 male & female who gave me all the 2010’s and 2012’s (grandma & grandpa to my hopes & dreams)
2) A 2010 male & female (predictable and comfortable like an old pair of shoes you can’t buy any more)
3) A 2012 male & female (still young enough to party but old enough to go to bed at a reasonable hour)
4) And a 2013 male & female!!!! The hope of the future….{cue up record scratch}
uh oh…..The 2013s I chose to keep for breeding are both from the 2010 & 2006 lines with no link back to my missing-link snake.
So what am I going to do?
Well, as it turns out I do have two 2016s that are from the alternate blood line. They both have the same 2012 father but their mothers are sisters so let’s consider them genetic brothers with different great-grandfathers. That’s the best I can do.
