My first snake

[ultimatecorns]

!!

I said i have 400 corns its auctually 350 and they're not all adults either even though thats none of you bussiness.
The reason I had another cornsnake breeder verify the wc was an amel was because I just started doing Corns when I found Jack (WHICH MEANS I ONLY HAD 1 CORNSNAKE!!! WHICH WAS JACK!!!) and didnt know much about them Gosh!
Another thing is I dont have a Digi Camera anymore because the one we used was borrowed, and I had to return it. We have just ordered the Sony MVC-CD500 digital camera and it will be here soon. Please be patient and we will post more pictures very soon. Most of our stuff has not hatched yet, it will only get bigger and better around here. We are trying to get a table at the Daytona Breeders expo, and so if you go, please look for Ultimate Cornsnakes, and we will show you most everything that is on the web site. We debated about not launching the new website so soon, since most of our stuff is still in their eggs.
Jack is probrably not het for Butter ( I admit this is far fetched, but I can hope can't I???? I mean I am breding him with an amleanistic female and who knows what we might get. But now trying to remember what we saw over a year ago, now that we have learned so much more, makes it difficult to know just what exactly it was we saw. It looked like a butter corn 10' away from him! It may have been a rat snake! I DONT KNOW AT THE TIME i KNEW DIDLY SQUAT NOW I KNOW MORE!!!
The miami phase has golden/orange saddles?! We have some that are gold, and others that are deep dark red, we are selectively breeding them for color, stay tuned. we will be sure to let you know how it turns out.
My Tangerine creamsicles are darker and richer, more vibrant orange than my other creamsicles. We have some that are striped and some that are not. I will prove to you I have them when the digi camera arrives i will post the pics on my site and on this thread! Mark my words!
I did not mean to stir anything up. So everyone just relax, and within a week or two I will have ample proof on my website.
In the meantime, I apologize for ruffling any feathers, please drop by our website and we'll keep you posted.
Anyone that wants to discuss this futher please call 941-255-3301 and ask for Tim. I hesitated to put my number here, but it is on the website.
Happy cornsnaking to you all.

 

[pewter]

the problem I see is, that if everyone would give a corn from one morph a new name when she slighly lookes different - than the overkill would be near!

 

[CAV]

I'm sorry I had to miss the exciting part of this today!

ultimatecorns,

How are you selectively breeding traits when you don't even know what genes are at work? What are they going to look like when they are fully grown? Anyone that has watched a corn grow from hatchling to adult know full well that the colors change dramatically in the first 2-3 years.

What started this whole thing were a bunch of rather incredible statements. I attempted to get you back on track after the first post about the wild Butter.

If you want to be a breeder, kudos and best of luck. But you are now choosing to sell a product. People are giving you their hard earned money, expecting to get what they pay for. If you are not providing that to them, then you are really just being dishonest.

You are excited about this, I'll give you that. But, take a deep breath and rethink your strategy. Take some time and learn a little before jumping in with both feet.


Just my .02..........

 

[Rich Z]

Nate - I think you need to slow down, son. You are biting off way more than you can chew at one sitting.

I applaud your efforts at care sheets, but you said yourself that just over a year ago you didn't know diddly about corn snakes. Did the entire experience base of your care sheets develop over just this one year? That's really not much time to make broad assumptions and then write them up in public as "professional" advice. If you are just summarizing the care sheets you have seen from other sites as well as what you have read in books, that is sort of semi-plagarism.

I assume your dad is relatively new at this as well, otherwise why did you take that one snake to a corn snake breeder in town to be verified?

Does your father know you are here on this site? If he has intentions of making this a business, he may want to pull the reins in on you a bit before you sink his plans, big time. Both of you need to step back and think this out.

You can't fool us. And you don't know enough about this to even realize what you are saying and how it sounds to us, so please stop trying before you make it much worse.

This advice is for free, just as the previous advice I gave you on the chat board. I suggest you heed it well.

 

[ultimatecorns]

Stay focused Cav

cav,
Thanks for the kind words. The selective breeding was in response to the question about the colors of miami phase corns, and as such the point was salient.
We only sell corns that are exactly what we portend them to be, and have no interest in taking peoples hard earn dollars on any sort of a ruse.
Please save the lectures and pontifications for your children, and do not assume what I am or am not doing. Lets deal in reality.
Though we are new, we will not misrepresent any of our animals to the general public. The one cornsnake in question, we readily admit we don't know what it is, hope to find out, BUT he is not for sale. The items that are for sale are exactly as we classify them.

 

[ultimatecorns]

ok rich

thanks for the fatherly wisdom and advice.

We look forward to meeting you at Daytona.

I think we have said all that needs to be said concerning our plans at this time.

I just want to reiterate that the snakes we have and are breeding come from wonderful people who know what they are doing, so we have a very high commitment to quality. Even Rob at Glades Herp yesterday remarked at what a great job we did with an older snow female that no one else had any success with. She was on the verge of death. We nursed her back to health and 4 months later, she produced 16 fabulous looking eggs.

Do we have much to learn? Absolutely! But, if we learn half as much in the next 12 months as we have in the last 12 months then we will know a ton. Mostly this has become a pursuit of joy and passion, and a great way to spend time with my Dad.

Clearly it is not our intent to get others ticked off at us. We are working hard to be the very best cornsnake breeders in the industry, and realize that this mission will take some time to accomplish. Though we may be in your rearview mirrror presently, we have the pedal to the medal..... (smile)

 

[Drizzt80]

Re: ok rich

Even Rob at Glades Herp yesterday remarked at what a great job we did with an older snow female that no one else had any success with. She was on the verge of death. We nursed her back to health and 4 months later, she produced 16 fabulous looking eggs.

Here is one example of the possible misinformation you are representing. I am new to breeding end of this hobby myself, and am amazed that in four months you took a death bed snake and had it lay eggs. Now I KNOW that it takes 30+ days to lay eggs. That's one of your four months. Assuming you didn't brumate, (since that alone is 3 months time and would use up your 4 month time frame for even a healthy snake), you would need to feed 'heavier' for approx. a month to get her into breeding condition, that again is for a healthy snake. That leaves you with two months time that you nursed a 'death bed' snake back to health! I'm sorry, but with all the honest research I have done, before entering attempts at breeding mind you, death bed snakes take a lot longer than two months to bring back to normal health, let alone breeding health.

Just my two cents as well. I'd recommend taking Rich's advice and others that have posted before me.

D80

 

[pinatamonkey]

My Tangerine creamsicles are darker and richer, more vibrant orange than my other creamsicles

From what I've read, darker-colored creamsicles are due to more corn and less emoryi in the mix. The more lighter, yellow-ish the orange, the more emoryi, the more darker, reddish the orange, the more corn.

If that is the cause of the color, I would not call them something different, since there is nothing different or new about them.

My advice is, slow down. You have had snakes for a year, and are planning on being the biggest corn snake breeder in the country. I have heard that the best way to turn you off snakes is to turn them into work

Being new, and with higher prices than average, it will be more difficult to sell. For example, why would I buy a ghost from you for $50 when I can by one from one of the top breeders in the country for $20 less...there are -tables upon tables of corns at Daytona. You need to do something to catch the people's eye...

 

[CornsnakeKeeper]

I'm not going to harp. You've read enough of that.

I'm just curious if you could tell us what you did to nurse your snow corn back to breedable size/health status?

The intelligence one portrays through their writings shows a lot about what dealing with a person would be like and the professionalism they would exert. I'm not sure of your age, nor is that any of my business.

 

[Rich Z]

Why do I get the feeling that two different people are posting here under ultimatecorns' login?

Nothing inherently wrong with this, but the comments were directed to the younger member of that team, however the responses are obviously NOT from Nate. But no effort is made within the posts to indicate that this is the case.

 

[Serpwidgets]

Looks like a major case of MPD.

I'm trying to figure out how one practices "selective breeding" (which is a process that requires selecting, raising, and breeding) to achieve "new" things within the course of 12 months.

I know more about morphs then you could ever know in 3 lifetimes so buzz off. And if you dont believe me ask me a question about genetics or how to make something or how many generations it will take, gosh. For crying out loud go to ivillage.com take the IQ test and tell me if you even gett abov 50! I got a 163!!!

(And I'm sure you get "strate A's" in s-p-e-l-i-n-g, too.)

IQ is not about "knowledge," it's about the ability to apply knowledge, the ability to reason, deduce, solve problems, etc.

But anyway, you made the offer... I don't believe you, so here's my genetics question for you:

Describe, in detail, an algorithm to get from homozygous for X recessive traits to homozygous for X+Y recessive traits (where X > 1 and Y > 1) within the shortest amount of time, with the lowest number of individuals needed in each generation of the project, and factoring in the variables of:

• availability of specific pre-existing genotype combinations,
• length of one breeding cycle,
• offspring per female per breeding cycle,
• and the span of time from birth to breeding age.

I look forward to hearing your answer...

 

[pewter]

oh, and i see another big problem.
you wrote that you bought several hundreds of corns over the last few month. and you wrote that you breed a lot of them this year. this makes me feel that you bought a lot of adults snakes.
do you know why they where sold?
ok, when Rich is seeling his snakes you can be sure it´s because of the fact that his space is limited but when I remember the last adult snakes I bought a few years ago ... nearly all of them had some good reason to sell them.
also the danger of getting some freeky stuff of bakterias in a colony like yours is higer than crossing blind the main street at rush hour.
mabe you have good luck and just a few hundered good and healty animals .... but I would be carefull.
it´s too much for such a short time.

 

[ultimatecorns]

nursing snow back to health

When we got the snow from Glades Herp, late last year (so I guess it was 7 or 8 months ago, not 4) we were told "this is an old snake, that is not doing very well, it probably won't breed for you." I got the impression that it had stopped breeding and that is why someone had sold it to them. I also got the impression from her eating records that they were concerned about her overall health. She was a "problem" animal. Since I was buying several other animals, I offered to take the snake and try to get it eating better and then if she laid any eggs I would give half of them back to Glades for payment. They agreed. They did not want to sell an animal in such conditin, and we were enthusiastic about trying to help.
We gave the snake alot of attention, she seemed to like smaller meals. She does have vision problems (cataratcs?)and requires hand feeding because sometimes when she strikes at her food, she completely misses. She perked up nearly right away. Since she was doing so well, we thought maybe she just took a year off from breeding and would be ok. So we brumated her in my garage, with an open window using "nature" temperatures, and then bred her. She didn't like the first male we tried her with, but prefered a younger 2001 male. She laid 16 gorgeous eggs. We are still waiting for those to hatch. I told Rob at Glades the other day about our success and he seemed genuinely surprised.
We aren't vets, nor can I say we did anything super intelligent other than just care for the snake. Perhaps like I said before she just took the year off, maybe she liked our male better. Perhaps it was simply the hand feeding. All I know is the snake that not much was known about as to age or health is doing fine today. Does that make us Albert Schwitzers? no. All I was trying to illustrate is that we are not complete idiots over here. Much of cornsnaking is common sense and caring for animals.

 

[ultimatecorns]

rush hour

pewter,
thanks for the tip. We were aware of everything you wrote. When one aquires nearly 400 animals in a year you learn a thing or two. You would be amazed at what one can find out there, from reptuable breeders, if one takes the time and energy to look. One example is that we discovered one person who was getting out of the business, and sold us several various adults that had already brumated, some had already bred. There are lots of good quality breeders out there. Some will take an item in trade. We swaped a car with one for a great variety of super quality animals we did not yet have. We even ran across a very gifted breeder, from whom we agreed to take a set (1.2) of everything they produced this year at a set price, thus "bulk" orders can get you a wide variety of animals as well. As with most people the vast majority of our purchases are hatchlings (last summer and this), plus some left over 01's, and now left over 02's or even a surplus adult here and there. We even talked with Rich about buying one of his "lots" of 100 surplus hatchlings for $700 that was on the fauna auction last week, though we did not do that. There are lots of ways to get lots of corns of good quality, if one desires to do so.
I think this will be my last post about our plans, strategies, and such. Keep an eye on us, we will be growing right before your eyes. We are only going to get bigger and better!!!!! Everyone get out there and get your friends interested in Cornsnakes.
So, enough with the third degree (smile). Lets all relax, and take a "wait & see" attitude on our newfound joy. Hopefully the new camera will get here soon and we can update the website. We still have a lot of eggs yet to hatch. So come back often, you will like what you see, we promise!!!!!
peace
everyone needs another cornsnake!!!!!

 

[dartguy]

I agree

Enough of the third degree...

In the beginning this guy posted some suspicious things, but, since has answered every post, with a very positive attitude I might add.

Lets cut the guy a break and let him "SHOW" us that he can take good care of these animals. That can only be proven over time, as I'm sure people like RICH Z and KATHY LOVE can attest to.

 

[Serpwidgets]

I disagree...

The entire series of posts by this person or people leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. From what is demonstrated here in this thread and on his website, which is plenty, I find his personal attitude, dishonesty, and business practices thoroughly disgusting.

I hope his business venture fails.

And I knew I wouldn't get an answer to my question. I knew it would suddenly turn into "enough of the third degree" (translation: "oh, you guys are mean and are picking on me.") It's amazingly easy to get braggarts to shut their mouths by asking a serious question or two. But that's ok, I already have MY answer.

 

[ultimatecorns]

answer to quiz

serpwidgets,
how kind and small minded of you to wish failure upon us. Your comments to our honesty, and business practices are silly at best and libelous (slander in written form) at worst, so please be careful. I wish nothing but God's very best for you and your family and to all who read these messages.

here you go:
Describe, in detail, an algorithm to get from homozygous for X recessive traits to homozygous for X+Y recessive traits (where X > 1 and Y > 1) within the shortest amount of time, with the lowest number of individuals needed in each generation of the project, and factoring in the variables of:

availability of specific pre-existing genotype combinations,

length of one breeding cycle,

offspring per female per breeding cycle,

and the span of time from birth to breeding age.

Answer: How can a homozygous animal have two recessive traits, should the question ask how to go from homo x to hetero x+y?
Assuming that is your real question:
Skip the algorithim, my mom the AP calculus teacher is in Thailand doing mission work. Lets put the question into common terms. Suppose you want to make a snow cornsnake. You take X (an albino corn) which is homozygous for amelanisim, and you want to create something that is heterozygous for x+y. we will call the y trait anerythristic type A (black). Breed the two (X & Y) together. You will get 100% normals, all 100% het for albino, and anery (snow). Raise up that clutch, and breed back together siblings and each new clutch you get will be(assuming no unknown hets):
approximately 9/16 will be Normal
3/16 will be Anery
3/16 will be Albino
1/16 will be Snow
The total time required is 2 years from the first breeding, assuming you are able to get the second generation to breed after 2 years. Let me map it out for you
year 0: breed anery with amel, have normal hatchlings, grow them up for 2 years.
year 2 : breed back normal siblings to each other, get snow hatchlings. You would want to do at least four clutches so you will have three snows, hopefully a pair (gender wise) for future breeding.. Second year old snakes tend to produce around 8-12 eggs in their first clutches. Second clutching them is not advisable. Thus each clutch of these eggs will tend to produce poosibly one or fewer snows.

 

[Darin Chappell]

Let me start off by saying that I did indeed get a response from my email to Kathy Love, and she was complimentary of Nate and Tim in large degree. She did mention that both of them are rather new to the cornsnake community and that Nate is rather young (9th or 10th grade she thought), but that they were serious about their plans and she was in the process of selling them several animals. That being the case, although I do not know either Nate or Tim from Adam, I do trust Kathy to tell the truth about a situation such as this. Therefore, I am perfectly willing to give "ultimatecorns" the benefit of the doubt.

However, there are a few things that I think they (and we) need to understand about the postings in this thread. Firstly, it is obvious that there has been a change of authorship in the postings being made. For example, here are segments from two different postings:

"Jack is probrably not het for Butter ( I admit this is far fetched, but I can hope can't I???? I mean I am breding him with an amleanistic female and who knows what we might get. But now trying to remember what we saw over a year ago, now that we have learned so much more, makes it difficult to know just what exactly it was we saw. It looked like a butter corn 10' away from him! It may have been a rat snake! I DONT KNOW AT THE TIME i KNEW DIDLY SQUAT NOW I KNOW MORE!!! "

"I just want to reiterate that the snakes we have and are breeding come from wonderful people who know what they are doing, so we have a very high commitment to quality. Even Rob at Glades Herp yesterday remarked at what a great job we did with an older snow female that no one else had any success with. She was on the verge of death. We nursed her back to health and 4 months later, she produced 16 fabulous looking eggs."

I just don't see the first writer (with his mis-spelled words and sporadic use of improper punctuation and grammar) being the writer of the second section, speaking of the "fabulous looking eggs." Maybe I am wrong, but with my experience doing internet sales, I have become pretty good at spotting tell-tale differences in writing styles. This appears too obvious to ignore.

Rationally, it would seem that, while the son stirred the hornets' nest, the father is trying to smooth things out. That's fine, but it really should have been the case that a differentiation in writers ought to have been made. Frankly, it would have been helpful to their business if the father had said something about his son being a little overzealous in his discriptions (thereby making that differentiation in writers), but, as a father, I understand wanting to stand up for your children.

What I don't understand, is what appears to me to be a bit of deception on Dad's part, though. Look at this paragraph from that same posting from which the second writing style example was taken:

"Do we have much to learn? Absolutely! But, if we learn half as much in the next 12 months as we have in the last 12 months then we will know a ton. Mostly this has become a pursuit of joy and passion, and a great way to spend time with my Dad."

Again, the writing style is clearly superior to that of the first posts, denoting that a more experienced, more educated writer produced it (ie: the father). However, look closely at that last line. It doesn't read like a 14-15 year old boy wrote it or said it, yet it is clearly written from his perspective. That is, unless the grandfather of this family is also involved!

So, it seems to me that Dad, in trying to smooth out what Son has said, is trying to do so in a way that looks as though Son were writing the answers. I can think of lots of reasons why this might be the case, but all of them leave one with a sense of dishonesty to one degree or another. Why try to make us think that the younger is writing these answers, when the older is obviously doing so??? That's just unreasonable, IMHO.

Simple hyperbole? Perhaps, but then we have another example of this type of "unintentional" miscommunication in relation to the snow corn. Was she "at death's door," or was she just a snake with a checkered breeding/feeding history that happened to have perked up for you this year??? It's not a big deal really, but it again smacks of someone trying to make himself sound more capable and important than he really is. A pattern? If it is seen in both father and son, is it now a shared pattern to be expected of them both? I really don't know, but I have to wonder given what we've seen thus far.

Of course, all of this is just my opinion, and I have precious little (if any) real proof of anything. As far as I know, they have decent snakes for sale at prices at which some people may very well buy them. I question their technique of applying a different name for animals that look different but have not yet been proven to be genetically distinct enough to warrant a separate morph name ("miami gold phase corns" and "tangerine creamsicles" don't cut the mustard!), but, as far as I know, they haven't ripped anyone off in any way.

All of this being true, I sincerely hope that this father and son team can make a go of it in this industry by being the type of reputable breeders that we all like to see. In furtherance of that wish, let me just offer the following for their consideration:

1. Take it easy on the new acquisitions. What you sell in this business is your name as much as your snakes. If you have more snakes than name in the beginning, your snakes can very easily eat more than your name can provide!

2. Never, ever lie. I mean, don't even tell a little white lie to save someone's feelings! If you say you have 400 hundred snakes, you better have them. It may not seem like a big deal to you, but when you're dealing overwhelmingly on the internet, as we all do, your ONLY source of trust is derived from what people can read of/about you. If your words are not 100% trustworthy, how can you be to people who have never met you? All they can do is read what you say, and if your 400 snakes are really 350, how will they know that their snow corns het for motley and pewter aren't really just snows? You could be the best breeder in the world, but if no one believes you, what good is it???

3. Along the same lines, don't try to make yourself look bigger than you are. In addition to being made to look like an untrustworthy business, you also look desperate. No one is going to knock Rich Z., Kathy L., Don S., or any of the other large breeders out of business anytime soon, and no one expects you to do so either. Talking as though you had abilities that you just cannot have after only one year of cornsnake experience is really insulting to those of us who have stuggled to do things rightly, regardless of what short-cuts we might have been offered along the way. You may very well understand a great deal about mendelian genetics, and you may know "the mix" that goes into every cornsnake morph available, but there is so much more to being "a breeder" than you can learn from simple paper or computer screen studying, that it is really foolish to try to make everyone else (many or whom know better, by the way) think that you have officially arrived simply because you've got several snakes with several clutches on the way!

Of course, you have every right to accept or ignore this advice as you see fit. I am done with this thread, unless someone addresses me directly, so I'll leave it there.

I think it's great that a father and son can work together as you two are, and I hope to bring my own boy into the hobby one day as well. I really do wish you both well in your business/hobby pursuits, which are beneficial to the animals and the industry as a whole.

 

[ultimatecorns]

darin

thanks for the mostly kind words, and you are mostly right in most of your assumptions. My kid did get in over his head in here, and so I have asked him to tone it down and not brag so much.
We appreciate all of the kind advice, and plan on being the type of breeders that will make the industry proud.
We do not know everything, nor do we think we have arrived. I apologize to all who took that inference. We have done a great deal in a short time, and we both clearly undersatnd that we have a long way to go. We also realize we have a long way to go to be ever regarded in the same light as Kathy, Don, or Rich.
Nate, my son, is quite bright, but immature. He is my joy and delight in life, and we are having a blast doing this cornsnake thing together. Thank you for your patience. Nate is truely sorry for the mountain that has grown out of the mole hill of his exhuberance over his first cornsnake. We gladly accept your generous offer to sit back and wait and see. Should either of us ever do or say anthing you find troubling please let me know, and I will correct the problem. Thanks once again for all the kind hearted and time consuming advice.
Nate's Dad
Tim Benson

 

[stephen]

hey

hey kid yesterday i was cutting my grass and i found a whole clutch of wild motley lavenders right in my back yard so i will be sellin them for 10 bucks each,LOLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!! and if you beleive that one i also got some beach front property for sale in utah you interested,comeon kid enough is a enough we all know you are the best cornsnake breeder around, my hats off to ya !!!kid