Superconda Super-Package

After much anticipation, we received one of my wife's dream snakes today from our friend Brent Bumgardner, a female Superconda.

Picking our jaws up off of the floor after having seen pictures of the first Superconda, we knew that if we ever had the chance to pick one up, we were going to get one.

Here's a picture of my wife at Daytona happily holding one of Brent's Supercondas:



Well, as fate would have it, Brent hatched a little girl out last month and we jumped at the opportunity as soon as we heard she was available. Considering how rare these currently are, only 6 in the world at the moment, we feel extremely privileged and owe Brent our gratitude in giving us this opportunity to be included in this wonderful project.

So, without further ado, here's Twix (another one of my wife's chosen names ):













Thanks for looking!

Cute little thing... and you know, the little fella does remind me of a Twix bar

wow, amazing looking snake. Newb question, but what exactly is a superconda?

A hognose who is a homozygous carrier to the "Anaconda" gene.
The Anaconda gene, if is present at a hetrozygous form affects the pattern to resemble that of an Anaconda- roughly 2 columns of dots on the snake's back.
The "SuperConda"- is pretty much patternless.

Kokopelli said:

Cute little thing... and you know, the little fella does remind me of a Twix bar

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Exactly! That's my wife's favorite candy bar, so I guess the name was kind of a natural selection thing. Thanks for the comment!

kpkp123 said:

wow, amazing looking snake. Newb question, but what exactly is a superconda?

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Thanks!

A Superconda is basically a patternless genetic trait and the first co-dominate trait found (by accident) in Western Hognose by Brent. The Superconda is the super form of the genetic trait whereas the Anaconda is the heterozygous form. You can read more about it here on Brent's site.

awesome thanks.

She's so beautiful!!!!! I love her name!! Now you need to work on making pink Twixes- that would be the most beautiful hoggy morph ever!! Contratulations.

I have a question. Is it less or more desireable, or the same, to have a female superconda?

Nanci said:

She's so beautiful!!!!! I love her name!! Now you need to work on making pink Twixes- that would be the most beautiful hoggy morph ever!! Contratulations.

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Thanks a lot!

Tonya just has this wonderful way of picking out all these fruity and silly names which really adds that extra little something. The names I pick aren't nearly as fun as her's are.

That's probably going to be the first breeding project I do with her considering Berry, our Pink Pastel male, is now proven. Also, quite a few other hognose breeders have made remarks about having problems producing Pink Pastels or even getting them to breed which doesn't surprise me as our female Pink Pastel is a problem eater is completely undersized for her age. So maybe we'll have a chance at producing something unique that nobody else has done yet. How cool would that be?

Nanci said:

I have a question. Is it less or more desireable, or the same, to have a female superconda?

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Well, that's really the hot debate, at least for the Anacondas. When Brent first started selling the Anacondas to the public, he was holding back all the females and selling only males. The problem was, he really wasn't thinking that males take less time to sexually mature and you can breed them multiple times within a single season to multiple females. The other aspect of this problem is that this morph is a co-dominant one, so the probable outcome of offspring of an Anaconda X Normal is going to be 50% Anaconda and 50% Normal. So, if you have a breedable male and breed him to several females, you are going to be producing a lot of Anacondas which drives the initial price of $3500 that those of us that were first buy them way down.

Now, considering that the Anaconda is basically a heterozygous phenotype of the Superconda, the probability of producing a Superconda by breeding 2 Anacondas together is 25%. Being that 2008 was the first year all the males were sold, 2009 would have been the earliest year that anybody was able to breed their males and hopefully produce female Anacondas. That means it would take close to 2 years or longer for the female Anacondas produced in 2009 to sexually mature and then play the odds in producing a Superconda.

Our problem is that our male Anaconda, Spot, showed no interest in breeding this year for us although he is now of breedable size. So that put us out until next season to try and breed him again if he even decides to breed for us. We already have a few dud males, an adult Albino and Hypo that have shown no interest this year which really put a monkey wrench into our plans.

So our mentality with wanting to purchase this Superconda female is that we do have a few proven males, one of which being Berry, that we can work with once Twix reaches sexual maturity. Even if we only put one of our normals with Twix, we'll produce all Anaconda offspring should Spot not perform for us. If he eventually does, then hopefully breeding him to Twix will produce 50% Supercondas and 50% Anacondas.

So, by the time 2011 rolls around, everybody else will have mature female Anacondas to breed back to their males to hopefully produce Supercondas while hopefully we'll be breeding our Superconda to our Pink Pastel, Berry. At least that's the plan!

I also forgot to add that Brent finally got a bit smarter after realizing the male Co-Dom problem, so when he does have some more Supercondas to sell, the males will be more expensive than the females.

Absolutely gorgeous!!!! Congratulations on such an incredible addition!!

Oh wow, what an amazing animal. Congrats to you both!

What a beauty! I'm envious, Troy!

Amazing! I have been doing lots of reasearch about the hognose moprhs! I love the axanthics with supercondas coming in a close second! I think and axanthic superconda would be the coolest morph!

David

<---- Extreme Jealousy! Congrats on the awesome pick-up and being involved on such an awesome project! I like Twix, it works for me lol. Keep us updated on the project!

Wow what a gorgeous little girl! I'm very happy that you got her too - I can't wait to see updates!

What gorgeous hoggies!!! Twix is absolutely beautiful and I really love the name.

Congrats on getting in on the project. I hope that it all goes according to plan for you!!!

And please, do a progression thread for Twix. We'd all love to see her regularly, I'm sure!

I think an axanthic superconda would be amazing, too.

So. Very. Jealous.
I adore anacondas, and your superconda is a looker!

Gorgeous! I've really gotten into hognose since I got my little Stella (see avatar). I'd love to get some morphs, but need to to get some money first, lol.