does not so flashy adults make not so flashy babies?

[ADEE]

ok. so ruger was purchased with the intentions to breed him when the time comes. My question is, if hes not flashy does that mean his offspring will also not be flashy? Can you have a "browned" out snake that makes pretty babies? Would I be better off getting a more brilliant pastel?

[Brimstone111888]

I believe the chances are better, that the offspring will not be super yellow. There have also been times where browned out pastels have thrown beauties.

[rabernet]

Ashley, I would get the cleanest, brightest normal female that you can to breed him to, and I think that will also help the quality of his offspring.

[Patrick Long]

if two "beautiful" people have a baby, there is a greater chance of "beautiful" kids. I think the same goes for every creature

[ADEE]

Pat, I disagree with that comment. I know several cases (im on alot of mom boards) where the parents are not attractive and they have BEAUTIFUL children.. .which is why i asked Cameron is not exactly a "clean" normal. Infact shes quite busy like he is.. darn it lol I do have intentions of getting a "spotless" spider (i like the look better) but i would hate to invest all this time and money on snakes that are not going to throw nice looking babies.

[catawhat75]

I second what Robin says. My pastel male has awesome blushing and flames but he has browned out more than I would have liked. I picked a female who is so light she seems to glow hoping it will clean up/brighten the offspring. Of course I won't know first hand until next year on her but that is what I have heard.

[Brimstone111888]

if two "beautiful" people have a baby, there is a greater chance of "beautiful" kids. I think the same goes for every creature

Pat, I disagree with that comment. I know several cases (im on alot of mom boards) where the parents are not attractive and they have BEAUTIFUL children.. .which is why i asked Cameron is not exactly a "clean" normal. Infact shes quite busy like he is.. darn it lol I do have intentions of getting a "spotless" spider (i like the look better) but i would hate to invest all this time and money on snakes that are not going to throw nice looking babies.

Pat is generally right. Genetics pretty much work that way. It is not a 100% guarantee that the baby will be a supermodel. Ugly people can have good looking babies, they just have a much better chance to throw an ugly one.

[PythonWallace]

I agree that you should start with the best looking parents, but I had a conversation with a breeder who imports a lot of gravis wc females, and he told me that the best looking babies usually come out of the ugliest snakes. So it's definitely possible to get offspring that blows the parents away. Unless the super cool males in the wild are just attracted to the ugly chicks. A lot of people say that certain morphs get better with every generation, too. That has to tell you something.

[Morphie]

Fact is, you've got chromosomes with all of their associated alleles available to choose from - but those come from mom and dad. You can tell what some of them are by looking at the snakes you're breeding (mom and dad), but they also have god-knows-what in their genes that isn't being expressed in their phenotype (a la heterozygous whatever).

Each animal has chromosomes in a given number of pairs. Each one in a pair reflects half of a given parent's genetic information.

Example: You have 46, 23 from mom, and 23 from dad. Your dad had 46, but the 23 he gave you were more or less randomly chosen from what HE got from his parents, same with the ones your mom gave ya.

Your mom's 23 got together with your dad's 23 and sorted out amongst themselves which genes were dominant enough to be expressed either exclusively or as a compromise with other genes in other places.

Therefore, if you have an animal that is bright shiny brilliant yellow, you know that this gene or collection of genes exist and thus bright shiny babies are a *possible* result of whatever genetic configurations "randomly" result from a pairing. You can increase the odds of bright shiny offspring by offering a mate who also carries an obvious "bright shiny" gene of his own. It's possible that there exists one or more "bright shiny" genes that are more or less recessive that any snake can be secretly carrying but not displaying, but the fact of the matter is: Unless You Can See It (or know what his parents looked like) You're Gambling (with even less favorable odds than breeding two attractive snakes).

Hoping that your browning-out pastel is going to produce unholy brightness in his children is ... optimistic. It is not entirely insane, however, stranger things have happened. Personally I'd rather use such luck to win a small lottery or something and buy the genes i need for my project in the form of visually remarkable snakes

[Entropy]

Really Ashley I'd do like Robin says, get a nice clean bright female. If you look at those from her collection she has some outstanding examples of what I think you should look for in a female for Ruger.