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Het Motley showing up in snakes appearance?

notserp

notserp

New member
My female Laveneder's markings start off in a Motley pattern, even her belly has no marks for the first section of her body. Now a bunch off her babies are showing this as well. I always thought the Motley gene was totaly resessive but now it seems some snakes just show a small portion of the pattern mutation. Does this mean they are most likly het for Motley? I had a pretty respected person say that it does.
 
Nope. That doesn't mean het motley at all. Some snakes just have more connected saddles on the neck than others.

Sometimes it continues down the whole snake and we call this a notley or mockley (for not-motley or mock-motley) even though the snake does not carry the motley trait. I currently own two notleys (Nautley, and Notlee), a hypo and and an amel one.
 
Shiari said:
Nope. That doesn't mean het motley at all. Some snakes just have more connected saddles on the neck than others.

Sometimes it continues down the whole snake and we call this a notley or mockley (for not-motley or mock-motley) even though the snake does not carry the motley trait. I currently own two notleys (Nautley, and Notlee), a hypo and and an amel one.
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Do they also have a clear belly for the first quarter of their bellies?
 
They can indeed. I hatched out a snow with connected saddles in the first-third of her body. She lacked belly checkers there. It was a developmental abnormality.

I've also hatched out a snake just a week ago with only a few checkers on the neck and the rest of the belly is completely blank. No connected saddles required.
 
Have you bred your female Snow? If so, are some of the hatchlings like this as well. I also just picked up a female Snow and she has a little bit of the same thing going on. Is this considered to be a bad thing in the genetic world? I think its cool but I don't want to keep procucing these babies if they are not very popular.
 
Shiari said:
Nope. That doesn't mean het motley at all. Some snakes just have more connected saddles on the neck than others.

Sometimes it continues down the whole snake and we call this a notley or mockley (for not-motley or mock-motley) even though the snake does not carry the motley trait. I currently own two notleys (Nautley, and Notlee), a hypo and and an amel one.
Click to expand...

^^^truth^^^
some breeders work towards specific color ranges, others work towards pattern, and some work towards both possibilities simultaneously.
the more we loosen one end (pattern) or the other end (color) up, the more genetically loosened up all the stuff that holds one end or the other together becomes.
And then sometimes some new geometrically unique occurances happen.
which can then be linebred to become a new morph name. Sometimes.
I like to tell myself I have learned one thing in the last half decade:
There is no such thing as "never" or "always" when it comes to cornsnake genetics.
 
dave partington said:
^^^truth^^^
some breeders work towards specific color ranges, others work towards pattern, and some work towards both possibilities simultaneously.
the more we loosen one end (pattern) or the other end (color) up, the more genetically loosened up all the stuff that holds one end or the other together becomes.
And then sometimes some new geometrically unique occurances happen.
which can then be linebred to become a new morph name. Sometimes.
I like to tell myself I have learned one thing in the last half decade:
There is no such thing as "never" or "always" when it comes to cornsnake genetics.
Click to expand...

So do you have any snakes like this.
 
The snow was a hatchling, and failed to eat.

The snake with the mostly bare belly who is NOT a motley has yet to shed.
 
She wasn't accepting of the force feeding either. I did tube feed her once, and then gave her a local mom'n'pop to let them try to get her started.

I have 20+ adult snakes, and had almost 70 babies at one time. 24 of those babies were non-feeders. Considering I work full time, force feeding 24 snakes is simply not going to happen.
 
Frankly, I think force-feeding babies is unethical. As much as we want them all to live, they can't. I'll do a mouse tail or two to keep them strong a little longer, but I wouldn't buy breeding stock that had been sausage stuffed for months to get them going. And if one won't take food after a month or two do you keep doing it? For how long? It would seem far worse to euthanize an older snake you have artificially kept going.
 
Shiari said:
She wasn't accepting of the force feeding either. I did tube feed her once, and then gave her a local mom'n'pop to let them try to get her started.

I have 20+ adult snakes, and had almost 70 babies at one time. 24 of those babies were non-feeders. Considering I work full time, force feeding 24 snakes is simply not going to happen.
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I understand. Its alot of work. I can't believe you had that big a percentage of non-feeders. I'm not judging, I'm just saying thats some bad luck.
 
Chip said:
Frankly, I think force-feeding babies is unethical. As much as we want them all to live, they can't. I'll do a mouse tail or two to keep them strong a little longer, but I wouldn't buy breeding stock that had been sausage stuffed for months to get them going. And if one won't take food after a month or two do you keep doing it? For how long? It would seem far worse to euthanize an older snake you have artificially kept going.
Click to expand...

I should have been more specifac. I wasn't trying to judge, I was just trying to get an opinion because I am debating this myself. I'm realitivly new to breeding and I have had pretty good luck with my babies eating as long as I've utilised some of the tricks I learned on this site, but of course I have had non feeders as well. Some of them ate by themselfs after 4-6 weeks of help and others were hopless so I gave up and euthanized them. I'm still trying to figure out whats right. It feels good when one takes off but really sucks when they don't. I do not enjoy the thought of torturing an animal for no gain. Its a tough call for me, just interested in other opinions. I never sell the survivors as breeders. I tell the customer that they are buying a pet and if there is any problem I will take them back. Thankfully this hasn't happened yet. I don't know if I'll ever figure this one out. I guess if I was breeding alot I wouldn't even bother because it would be just too much.
 
Well, I suppose everyone has their own limit. There is no solid evidence if the propensity to feed on mice is genetic, but it would stand to reason. I can say with certainty that the earlier generations of wild caught snakes' babies have been hardier on average than the mutations (which come from longer term captive lineage). I will try every scenting trick in the book, live, deli'd, car rides; you name it. But beyond a few tails to keep them strong enough to "decide" to eat, force feeding is where I, personally, draw the line.
 
15 of those 24 babies were from a single clutch of 20 animals. I've retired the male. His neurotic nature seems to pass on to his offspring and produce an abnormal number of non-feeders. -_-
 
Shiari said:
15 of those 24 babies were from a single clutch of 20 animals. I've retired the male. His neurotic nature seems to pass on to his offspring and produce an abnormal number of non-feeders. -_-
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I've always wondered if genetics for this behavior could be hereditary. It sounds like that was the case. Very interesting. I'm starting to lose faith in force feeding. I have one little guy and I just finished force feeding him. It was supposed to be assist but I ended up having to get it half way or more down his throat before he finally took it down. The poor guy was flipping out. I'm probably just prolonging his suffering but its so hard to let him go.
 
Yeah. Vanay is the snake in my avatar, too. He's a lovely charcoal with good genetics (het for hypo, amel, and caramel that I've found so far) but both his clutches with Lacy, his clutch with Tor, and his clutch with Babs had more non-feeders than I'd like. The clutch with Tor had the highest percentage of feeders, I think because Torandre is a very very mellow snake.
 
Shiari said:
Yeah. Vanay is the snake in my avatar, too. He's a lovely charcoal with good genetics (het for hypo, amel, and caramel that I've found so far) but both his clutches with Lacy, his clutch with Tor, and his clutch with Babs had more non-feeders than I'd like. The clutch with Tor had the highest percentage of feeders, I think because Torandre is a very very mellow snake.
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Thats too bad. He looks like a very nice charcoal and I'm sure with the hets he has, you have produced some very nice hatchlings along the way. At least you can injoy him as a beautiful pet. Was he one of your first snakes?
 
Shiari said:
Yeah. Vanay is the snake in my avatar, too. He's a lovely charcoal with good genetics (het for hypo, amel, and caramel that I've found so far) but both his clutches with Lacy, his clutch with Tor, and his clutch with Babs had more non-feeders than I'd like. The clutch with Tor had the highest percentage of feeders, I think because Torandre is a very very mellow snake.
Click to expand...

How are Vanay's eating habits? Did you have him had a hatchling?
 
I got Vanay as a hatchling and he always ate like a champ. He was terrible for handling though, and I often referred to him as my tornado snake. He was probably... my 5th or 6th snake. While he's lovely, I'm not terribly attached to him because I like to be able to *hold* my snakes and he still hates being handled. He doesn't bite, but he doesn't ever hold still either.
 
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