neuro

[JTR]

If a hatchling showed neuro signs, but those signs faded, would it be bad to breed her in years to come?

[Colin Vestrand]

nobody knows.... you can ask ball python owners this same question, only input 'spider' instead of jag and have the exact same opinions though.
in fact, i bet similar questions have been posted in the ball moprhs forum!

[Colin Vestrand]

for example... replace 'spider bal' with 'jag carpet'.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Adam Wysocki @ 8ballpythons.com Blog
The real “spin” on spiders.
Tuesday, February 13th, 2007

When I purchased my first spider many years ago, I had heard and was told about “spinning” in spider ball pythons. The way it was described, I understood “spinning” to be a condition where the animal continually loops their head and neck in a “corkscrew” motion and barely has the ability to sit still. I looked over my spider and there was no “cork screwing” so in my mind, he wasn’t a “spinner”.

Over the years that followed as I raised my spider, I heard a lot of big breeders making statements like “all spiders spin” or “all spiders are tweaked” and I really got pissed off. How could they be saying stuff like that? All they were doing was hurting any chance I ever had at selling spiders. Surely I would produce spiders that didn’t spin and if they were telling people that every single one was “tweaked”, I’d be cooked!

Then, I started producing my own spiders. Within my first couple of clutches I noticed a couple that “weren’t right”, but no big deal, I just wouldn’t sell those. Then I started looking harder. I noticed different degrees of odd behavior in all of the spiders that I produced. Some shook their head from side to side, some spun like tops, and others did the corkscrew thing as they were cruising their cage at night, still others were less noticeable but it was there. The less noticeable ones didn’t wobble or corkscrew, but they held their head at an angle when you looked at them. Kind of like the way a dog looks when it hears something it doesn’t understand. So then I started looking at spiders. Spiders in my friends collections, spiders at shows, spiders in pictures posted on the internet. All of them do it do some degree, all of them.

I’ve read the internet rumors that it has something to do with the amount of white, or the head pattern, or the connecting or non-connecting neck stripe on the animals neck … bologna! It doesn’t matter, they all do it. I’ve also heard that spider siblings do it. After producing tons of spider clutches, I don’t find that to be an accurate statement. I do believe that breeders have seen “spinning” in spider siblings, but I don’t think that it is any more common in the normal looking siblings of spiders than it is in any other normal looking ball python. Over the years (and before I ever heard of spinning in spiders) I have produced a heterozygous albino and a normal looking pastel sibling that spin the exact same way that spiders do. I feel that it is a condition that can effect all ball pythons but for whatever reason is common in spiders. I’ve also heard that the reason spiders spin is because they were so inbred early on in the project … ridiculous. The recessive mutations out there have been inbred/line bred by an order of magnitude more than spiders. The notion that a co-dominant/dominant mutation can be inbred more than a recessive is an ill informed one.

I finally understood what the big breeders were saying. It’s not always as in your face as people expect it to be, but it’s there in each and every spider. You just have to know what to look for. Now I know a lot of people are going to read this and say “no, not my spider”. I’m telling you, your spider does it too. You just have to know what to look for. I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know one thing for sure … spin or not, I LOVE SPIDERS! I love their natural variation, I love the combos that they make, I love everything about them. I will always breed and produce spiders. I will do my best to keep my customers informed about them as much as I am and leave the decision to them. If I have to end up keeping every spider and spider I produce … well, that’s fine with me! :-)

[JTR]

Reason for asking is i have the chance to get a 25% diamond jag, she pretty good looking. but The breeder said that she had shown signs but they have faded.
gonna change the subject a bit but can some one explain exactly what the 25% means, i sort of know, but i still get confused.

[Colin Vestrand]

it's most likely a 50/50 diamond coastal cross bred to a coastal jag.

[JTR]

'08 female produced by a Diamond x Coastal female to a Tiger x Jag male.

[Colin Vestrand]

right, so 50% diamond coastal x 100% coastal = 25% diamond x coastal...

[JTR]

this is where genetics confuses me.
If she were to be bred with a coastal male, what would her clutch consist of, like does the tiger x jag male play a role in her, obviously she took after the jag, but will the tiger show up? ugh, even trying to type this out is confusing me.
sorry, im kinda new to the world of genetics

[Colin Vestrand]

kind of... a tiger jag is going to make some killer jags most likely, but they won't be tiger jags. they'll be jags that may or may not have some tiger influence. a pairing between a tiger and a jag is the only thing that's going to make tiger-jags. but... the striping and/or coloration of the tiger portion will be distributed among some of the clutch, but unless the diamond coastal dam is het tiger then it will probably be fairly limited.
that's my understanding of it... i've yet to breed them myself, so someone correct me if i'm wrong.

[JTR]

It seems like i get so lost when it comes to pairings like that.
thanks for clearing that up for me.