A lesson learned. Know who your daddy is.

In prior years, I have always had a few "whos your daddy" clutches. This is where you breed multiple males with one female... and when eggs are laid, you have no idea who the daddy is. Usually you can figure out the dad once the babies hatch....

It is all fun and games, until you get lucky, and something special hatches out. Then the reality of what you have done, and how you have totally screwed yourself sets in.

This happened to me this last season. I posted about the situation I experienced several times on this forum. Here is one of those threads.. http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...you-requested.

Summary: I bred a virgin female pastel to up to 3 proven breeder males. A cinny, a spider, and a pastel. The resulting babies were 2 bumble bees, a cinny, and the "???" snake. Here are the facts....

1.) The clutch had at least 2, possibly 3 dads.

2.) I have no idea what the "???" baby is other then I know for a fact it isn't a normal pastel, spider, or cinny.

3.) Cool problem to have right? Yeah, the snake is cool but the situation it put me in sucked.

4.) I have no idea who the dad of this baby is. In order to try to make another one, I would either have to breed the baby back to the mom, or try to breed her to the same males again (1 at a time this time).

5.) At the end of the season I made some hard business decisions and ended getting three males with multiple morphs to replace my old male breeders... therefore I had to sell off all of the possible dads of this snake.

6.) Now that I have all this money invested in my very expensive new male breeders, I can't waste a year (anytime soon at least) breeding the baby back to the pastel mom and possibly getting nothing.... I can't afford to take that chance... Instead she will be bred to one of my new 4-morph males.

7.) So I ended up having to sell the snake for next to nothing because I couldn't guarantee its genetics in any way, and there is no place for it in my future projects. Most think the absolute least it could be is a weird looking super pastel, but because of the uncertainty I couldn't even charge a super pastel price. (By the way the possible pastel dad just had another clutch hatch out with 2 super pastels. Neither one looks anything like this one... no way its the same morph)

Lesson learned: I will never not know who the dad of a clutch is again. It is all fun and games until something special happens... and things get very complicated, very quick.

Sure I could have kept him and done the necessary breeding to try to prove him out, but that just didn't fit into my plans. I would have had a lot more options if I knew for a fact who the parents were.

You should post a pic of the baby..

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Originally Posted by Rat160

You should post a pic of the baby..

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Click on the link he posted.

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Originally Posted by Rat160

You should post a pic of the baby..

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http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/...o/IMG_2155.jpg

Still hasn't gotten any darker.

Sucks. I would have paid SP price for her!

Very, very good point.

is it possible that one of your other breeders is say a fire spider or a Fire cinni and you just sold a firefly?

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Originally Posted by Freakie_frog

is it possible that one of your other breeders is say a fire spider or a Fire cinni and you just sold a firefly?

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Possibly? Doubtfull? Who knows!? And I don't even know what male we are talking about!!! Trust me, it is a crap situation to be in... kinda the point of this thread.

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Originally Posted by Kinra

Click on the link he posted.

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Haha post was so long I forgot about the link when I was finished reading.

And thanks Mike for posting the picture. A looker for sure also would have paid top dollar for it.

is it just me but I see yellow belly in there with the flames.

The flames and alien heads almost make it look like there could be some Cinny in there as well as Super Pastel, but the color wouldn't be right for a Cinny Super Pastel.

At the least you could have just purchased a big normal girl for less than $100 and bred it to her. Depending on what hatched out...This could have helped clarify what was in there. Just a thought.

This rediculously clean bee was one of the brothers... and the other bee was just as clean.

http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/...IMG_1637-1.jpg

I have made lots of babies with the male spider, cinny and pastel and nothing special has ever resulted... so I am hoping it is something special in the mom.

Maybe something special with the mom + a particular male.. some kind of special, ultra or whatever hidden gene stuff that's poppin up these days. Keeping my fingers crossed for you that its all in the female, she tosses some beauties!

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Originally Posted by Mike Cavanaugh

This rediculously clean bee was one of the brothers... and the other bee was just as clean.

http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/...IMG_1637-1.jpg

I have made lots of babies with the male spider, cinny and pastel and nothing special has ever resulted... so I am hoping it is something special in the mom.

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can you post your dam (breeder), I think there was a fire blood in your dam. first look like pastel fire and there i think was a fire spider... just my thought.

Sorry Mike, that had to have been a tough decision to sell them. Definitely post pics of Mom and, if you have them, the possible sires. It does look like there is some Fire gene (or a similar highlighter gene) going on with them. That Bee is KILLER!

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Originally Posted by reptile_republic

can you post your dam (breeder),

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This is the mom... need to get a better picture of her.

http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/...o/IMG_1984.jpg

Here is the mom as a hatchling when I first purchased her.

http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/...photo/p1-1.jpg

Mom looks like a regular pastel. The mystery must be with dad.

Possible DAD's (again, all three of these guys have fathered more then 10 clutches each... and nothing special has ever happened....

Pastel

http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/...DSC00500-1.jpg

Spider

http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/...to/peter-1.jpg

Cinny

http://i1136.photobucket.com/albums/...DSC00498-2.jpg


By the way, I should note... at least the mystery snake was sold to a friend, and a BP.net member - Theresa Baker (Wolfyhound)

If there's a mystery gene going on, and you include the bees, then the mystery would have to have come from the spider father. If you've ruled out the mother for sure.

For sure, you could rule out the pastel male and the cinny male as culprits because it looks like whatever is going on affected the bees as well as the funky pastel.

If mom was a virgin before this clutch....and the spider has sired multiple clutches without throwing anything unusual before this...then I would be pretty sure the mom is the one with something special going on.

I THINK...so long as you still have the mom...you still have a chance of finding something unique again, even if you sold the spider sire and the unusual pastel. Do you still have those clean bees? Might be cool to breed one of those back to mom in the future, if one is male.

(Sorry if you covered some of those answers about which snakes you still own in your original post...I'm having a hard time keeping up with my own history, much less anyone else's. :P )

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Originally Posted by JLC

(Sorry if you covered some of those answers about which snakes you still own in your original post...I'm having a hard time keeping up with my own history, much less anyone else's. :P )

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LOL! I understand.

Nope all of the babies are sold. The mom is a permanent member of my collection. Her next boyfriend will be my Super Lemon Blast 100% het Axanthic.

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Originally Posted by Mike Cavanaugh

LOL! I understand.

Nope all of the babies are sold. The mom is a permanent member of my collection. Her next boyfriend will be my Super Lemon Blast 100% het Axanthic.

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Well, I'll be looking forward to seeing her future clutches. I think she's got something going on, even if she's not wearing it on the outside. ;)

I'm looking forward to breeding theMike to a normal in hopes of seeing a clue in the babies.

I'm sorry to hear about the situation this put you in, but I must admit that it is a very interseting read.

I'll definitely keep this in mind when I get my breeding groups ready (though I don't think I'll run into this for awhile, since I'm going for humblebees).

I say pair it up with a YB and see if you cant make some stripes. Sure looks like a Pastel Specter to me.