NERD 5+ Gene Morphs...

[BigIan]

I've been watching a lot of Youtube videos including some featuring Kevin from NERD showcasing some of his 5+ gene animals. I can't imagine how much time it takes to get to the point that you're producing animals with such complicated mixtures of genes but I wonder while he's listing all of the genes involved in each snake, how the hell can he tell? There are so many obscure genes used to create them, I just don't know how he's able to identify traits from each gene included in the appearance.

Has anyone bought one of the 5+ gene morphs? I'm wondering how they do long term or if all of the crossing makes them susceptible to deformities.

I'm not trying to bad mouth or or bash what he does, just real curious and also curious if I'm the only one that's wondered this.

Thanks in advance for any participation in this thread

[BrianB801]

Most 4 or more gene snakes I've seen look amazing, but, it is usually impossible for me to for sure identify a gene or two, I guess proving out doesn't just apply to PH's and dinkers lol


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[Kodieh]

When you have a "5 gene snake", the only way to prove it is hope it's male and cover a bunch of females. Then, when it hopefully pops out all five of the genes it supposedly has: congrats! You know it has five genes!

That's the only sure fire way to do it, until we start sequencing the morphs genetic code and test all the morphs.

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[decensored]

I imagine along the path to creating a 5 gene animal you have created every imaginable combination under it. If you made a yellow belly, Mojave, pastel, spider, cinnamon. You would already know how a yellowbelly cinnamon spider looks like, or a pewter bee looks like, or a yellow belly spider mojave. Because chances are he's already produced all of the possible 3 and 4 gene combos before hitting the 5 gene.

[Badgemash]

When you have a "5 gene snake", the only way to prove it is hope it's male and cover a bunch of females. Then, when it hopefully pops out all five of the genes it supposedly has: congrats! You know it has five genes!

That's the only sure fire way to do it, until we start sequencing the morphs genetic code and test all the morphs.

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I'm going to fund bp genetic mapping when I win the lottery one day (although I'm told you have to buy a ticket first).

But yes, proving it out is the only surefire way to do it, but having the boatloads of experience those guys do also helps make for pretty educated guesses.

[Pythonfriend]

there are many different strategies that can help.

- tons of experience. like decensored said, they have seen the underlying stuff often enough. also knowledge of markers of different morphs, etc.

- super forms. if you hit a 5 gene combo and the female is a super enchi super pastels, thats 2 less genes to figure out. same with the males, he is super this, she is super that. leads to clutches where everything will have, for example, single-gene enchi + cinnamon + YB. now you have a head-start for identifying the clutch. gene complexes / "acts like a super" can also help, like in highway + extra genes to ivory + extra genes.

- careful pairing. multi-sire clutches only when it wont later interfere with identification. like when one male has super GHI, and the other male has no GHI or darkeners in it whatsoever, its fine, running them both over the same group of females wont cause identification issues. or when you have a triple gene male, and a different male that has the same 3 genes and one additional extra gene. also no problem.

- good record-keeping over multiple generations with pictures. when in doubt, see if the database can help, pictures of grandparents and clutches and such.

- using clutch results to prove out the parents, then using the now proven genetics of the parents to better identify future clutches. and if needed holding back and breeding possible new combos to prove them out.

- kinda obvious, but... numbers. large numbers of clutches, large numbers of snakes, multiple examples of the morphs in the collection.

its quite a bag of tools. i guess experience and good record keeping and proving stuff out and being smart about the pairings would be the most important ones. when a breeder keeps learning and uses some of these tools, i can see how they can get to high numbers of genes and can still be sure about it, at least most of the time.

about health, it doesnt really affect the health, unless there are issues with the individual genes that are present in the snake; these will also be present in combos containing the gene. Also you can do this stuff without inbreeding over multiple generations, and there is a way to reset bloodlines back to an inbreeding factor of zero, by outbreeding.

[JMinILM]

Some combos are a lot easier to tell then others as well. I think knowing what the other possible combos are and comparison goes a long way. Keeping a few large normal females around isn't a bad idea in case you produce a male combo that you can't identify the components of.