Why would anyone buy het a toffee/candy for more than a toffino/candino?

Earlier this season I saw many breeders selling the candinos/toffinos for less than the het toffees/candies. Can anyone think of a reason why that would be more helpful? I mean, if you think about it, the albino gene would be a marker to let you know if your BP is heterozygous for toffee or not. I mean, you get the same percentage breakdown of the gene with the added bonus of having either an exact idea of what you're genetics are, or at worst your offspring is either het toffee or albino instead of toffee and normal. Plus, you have a cool looking het for toffee! Seems like a no brainer. Anyone have anything to add, or explain what I've missed with this one?

They were pricing them higher or selling them for higher?

Well I guess I'm not completely sure if they were selling them for higher, as I didn't get one (yet :D ) but they were definitely being priced higher. Its hard for me to understand why one would a het over a toffino, which is a het toffee plus albino which happens to make a toffino because they're allelic. I wish all my hets were as easy to identify! lol

Granted it's not my favorite recessive area, so I'm not necessarily qualified, but if there's no size difference I don't understand the logic of that pricing.

Depends, I've seen bigger breeders asking A LOT for het toffee babies. I got my yearling (just short of 500g) het for $850 shipped so I figure that's pretty reasonable.

I wouldn't buy a toffino for my toffee project simply because you don't know which babies are het for what and I don't care to sift through the albinos/hets created.

Even though it works with Albino, many people want to keep the Toffee/Candy stuff pure, without the Albino gene in them. A Toffino/Candino is a cross and when bred to a normal the babies are het for either one, and you can't tell the difference most of the time. I personally believe in keeping it pure and keeping Albino out of it, though the crosses are quite nice as well.

I suppose I was thinking of it like this:

If I was going to buy a pair het toffees to breed, I would hope to get 25% toffee, 50% het toffee, and 25% normal. I wouldn't know which of the remaining offspring carried the toffee gene because they're all phenotypically normal, as toffee isn't a visual heterozygous mutation like mojave, pastel, or any other incomplete dominant ("co-dom" = :colbert:). I wouldn't be sure of what is normal or what is het for toffee. However, if I were breeding a toffino to toffino instead of het toffee to het toffee, for example, I would know exactly what all of the offspring are. The genetic breakdown would be: 25% toffee, 50% toffino and 25% albino. No question as to what the genetics are, because everything is visual. Its always good to be sure of the offsprings' genetics, right? :gj:

Lets say I had a clutch from a toffino male X toffee female pairing. Statistically, I would get the same 25% toffees as I would with a het to het pairing, but I would also get 25% toffinos from that clutch. Yeah, 50% will be het for either albino or toffee, but the toffinos are a sure thing compared to the het toffee X het toffee route.

It is NOT like adding albino to the mix will compromise the integrity of the toffee allele. It seems if I was planning to get a pair of hets to make a toffee, getting a pair of cheaper or similarly priced toffinos would be a no brainer. I'd get the toffees I wanted, while getting the benefits of certainty in the genetics of the remaining offspring. No possible hets to worry about selling, because I have certainty on my side. :D

Granted, if my goal is to make visual toffee combos, I really need to get a visual animal thats homozygous for the toffee gene. It would be a pain to work on combos without it, but not impossible necessarily. No matter how its put out there, the albino genetics adds a bit, or a lot, of certainty when working with these allelic recessives.

It's harder to tell the difference in babies than you think. I know of Toffino x Albino this year and the breeder had no idea what they had, though they were all visuals. I don't like to question my breedings in the least bit. I also would rather not have to raise snakes up to near adult size just to figure out what they are either.

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Originally Posted by bad-one

Depends, I've seen bigger breeders asking A LOT for het toffee babies. I got my yearling (just short of 500g) het for $850 shipped so I figure that's pretty reasonable.

I wouldn't buy a toffino for my toffee project simply because you don't know which babies are het for what and I don't care to sift through the albinos/hets created.

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From what I've been seeing out there, that seems like a really good deal!

If you think about it, even if when breeding het to het, you still don't know which offspring have the toffee gene and which ones don't. Whenever you're dealing with het toffees, whether those are toffinos (het toffee + het albino) or normal appearing het toffees, unless you breed them to a visual toffee, there will always be possible hets. If I was holding females back, I would rather hold back a toffino that I know had the toffee gene than a 66% het toffee female.

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Originally Posted by Luke Martin

It's harder to tell the difference in babies than you think. I know of Toffino x Albino this year and the breeder had no idea what they had, though they were all visuals. I don't like to question my breedings in the least bit. I also would rather not have to raise snakes up to near adult size just to figure out what they are either.

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That is totally legit. They do all look the same as hatchlings, so there is that necessary wait time to be 100% of what your genetics are. I think the thought of waiting until they're almost adults to be able to differentiate them apart is a bit of an exaggeration, but maybe a few months. On the bright side, a 300g female is going to sell for more and a lot faster than a hatchling!

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Originally Posted by PsychD_Student

From what I've been seeing out there, that seems like a really good deal!

If you think about it, even if when breeding het to het, you still don't know which offspring have the toffee gene and which ones don't. Whenever you're dealing with het toffees, whether those are toffinos (het toffee + het albino) or normal appearing het toffees, unless you breed them to a visual toffee, there will always be possible hets. If I was holding females back, I would rather hold back a toffino that I know had the toffee gene than a 66% het toffee female.

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Well my goal is long-term, I'll be getting a nice male (thinking enchi champagne as this seems to be the only cross where champagne doesn't wipe out all the pattern) to cross to her and then hold back male offspring in the hopes of proving out the het morphs and producing combos :) Gotta start somewhere! I'm just not interested in toffino combos and I'd be awful disappointed to realize I'd missed out on the pure toffee combo!

I can understand why some people would want to have just the toffee gene by itself, but I certainly can't see why someone would pay MORE for it. It's really not THAT hard to seperate out, it's just two alleles.

Well Luke pretty much gave the reason why. Most of the lines are diluted. Think about it as quality pastel staying bright as it ages versus browning out. They could of priced it as more of a pure line or a better quality.

I'd pay the extra just to keep the regular albino gene the heck away from the project.

First generation toffinos are fine - but you are going to have to hold onto a lot of animals in the future back simply to know what you were selling. And you might still not be 100% certain.

That's not a situation I would feel comfortable in as either a seller or a buyer. Especially given the price difference between a toffee and a regular albino.

I can understand all sides here. But personally, the Toffino is a beautiful snake all on its own. Paul Begg at The Urban Reptile has comparison pics of both a Toffee and Toffino that he hatched weeks apart. The pic shows them at 400 +/- grams and there is a HUGE difference. And a buddy of mine in south FL hatched out a clutch of Albinos and Toffinos and there was quite a distinct difference in color between the 2 at 240-250 grams. Of course if you're hatching 12 clutches of poss. Toffees, Toffinos, and Albinos holding onto 72-80 snakes for 3-4 months to color out could be quite strenuous. but if you're talking about holding back a clutch or maybe 2, then it's not that bad. As far as "diluting" the pure Toffee gene, Het anything has a chance of diluting. Unless every breeder is extremely select and all used the exact same color "normals" to create Hets, there is always a chance of diluting. There is some speculation surrounding the length of color change based upon temp variances during growth. Alot of T- albino animals are affected by acromelanism, which is the rate of color change during growth due to temp differences. Of course it isnt seen in Albinos because there isnt a huge color difference between hatchlings and Adults, but seeing as how the Toffee gene goes thru a HUGE color change throughout its life, this could explain why some Toffinos and Toffees don't seem to color out quite as quickly. Typically with acromelanism, the lower the temp, the faster it changes. This is still speculation because no one has taken the time to do an "experiment" but if it works in other animals, it could very well be playing a role here as well.

But all that aside, Toffees are one of the most handsome looking Recessive genes in my book, and nothing gets more classic then the Albino. I have a Toffino girl myself, and to be able to enjoy the looks of both genes in one... pretty darn cool.

But to answer the original question... because they do. The good majority of people that want to work with the Toffee/Candy genes aren't interested in working with the Albino gene. This week I saw 50% het Candies for $500 and 66% for $600. Still more then an Albino. So why not invest into just a het if that's what you want to work with. That being said, that doesn't justify the bastardizing of Toffino/Candinos right. Just because its not what you want yo work with doesn't mean you should knock others that do. I respect Markus Jayne and Ozzy for both embracing the Candino Morph and making progress with some stellar combos. The market prices are derived strictly from demand. And the demand for Toffee/Candy is greater then Toffino/Candino, hence why the gets go for what they do.

i have to say:

working with albino and toffino and toffee WILL NOT "dilute the gene".

when you work with ivories / super stripes / super spectors, does that in any way diminish the quality of the yellowbelly or specter genes that are at play? no.

and when you work with super mojaves / mystic potions / super mystics, does that take away from the quality of the mojave or mystic gene? no.

same here. Genes are not two liquids you mix, and then cannot properly unmix again. Genes are pieces of digital information, and a BP can have zero copies, or one copy, or (except for most dominants) two copies, of any gene. Never 0.8 or 1.7.

that being said, it depends on the individual breeder and personal choice, and also on what collection you already have. if you own no albinos, why not go for pure toffee/candy and treat it like any other stand-alone recessive project? its totally understandable.

if you want to work with albino/toffino as well, it brings both advantages and drawbacks. you can get albinos + extra genes quite cheaply and use these to first transfer these genes into toffino, then into toffee. So you can use albino as a portal to bring in codominant genes, without having to work with hets at all, only visuals. At the same time you can avoid inbreeding.

like, for example, you have 3 abino females, all with extra genes in them. Now you get a male het toffee or toffino and breed it to these albino + extra gene females. Now you can pick out the ones that got the toffee gene, the toffinos, and breed them to different unrelated albinos, with different extra genes, AGAIN. Then you breed 2nd gen toffinos together. inbreeding is down to distant cousin breeding. these two will have 7 distinct grandparents as opposed to 8, thats a very low level of inbreeding. And the first pure toffee you hit might be a 4 or 5 gene animal. and along the way you get tons of nice visual albino and toffino combos you can sell.


the drawback is, if you breed for example a pewter toffino to an enchi yellowbelly toffino, for example, it will be a bit hard to sort things out. you get 25% albino 50% toffino and 25% toffee, and on top of that 16 other morph combinations.

It maybe easy to sort out when you breed toffino to toffino and you get the 3 variations, you just wait a bit and see how the eye color and skin color diverge over time, but stack some darkening and brightening morphs on it and it will become really hard. thats a real drawback.

i think both strategies have their advantages and drawbacks.

about the prices: prices for albino (just like the prices for hypo) have really bottomed out. prices for toffee/candy are really high.
of course the prices for toffino and het toffee will be somewhere inbetween, much higher than the price for any visual albino, much lower than the prices for any pure toffee. Nobody should wonder why prices for het toffee are higher than prices for visual albinos, thats a given.

the question is: why are non-visual het toffee more expensive than prices for the visual and quite pretty toffinos? It surprises me to a degree, i would expect the prices to be similar.

Well said Pythonfriend. I guess I should have clarified my use of the term "diluted". I'll use the fire gene for example. When they first hit the market, they were extremely easy to separate from a normal. Very bright and clean. But of course, with mass breeding to fulfill the market and make an attempt to use the gene in various projects, there were very few who were selectively breeding them to "cleaner" normals and morphs. Over time they have almost lost that initial aww factor. Not all fires, some are still producing beautiful ones, but take a browse thru KS and the good majority look like light colored normals, the gene still has the same effects, just not as clean on it own. Although trying to compare codoms to recessives is a lost cause in my book.
But I can't agree more, you're not making a Margarita and trying to drink just the tequila. I want someone to try to convince me that a yellowbelly or spark that's produced by a puma is not really a yellowbelly or spark.

very true, linebreeding and carefully selecting does play a role.

breed a very nice bright citrus/lemon pastel to a very nice dark 8-ball, both line bred, and all the line breeding goes down the drain.

but then, people that still work with albinos will go for high contrast + interesting pattern. i mean, when you work with albinos what else would you do? except for albino pieds? ramp up contrast and make the pattern interesting, and some morphs just dont work with albino because they do neither with albino.

i think that might just work with toffee as well. ramp up contrast, make the pattern more interesting.

but you can also take the other route, use pure toffee or candy, treat it as a recessive project, and try out whatever previously worked well with albinos. the genes are very similar and with albino everything has been tried out already, so you can assume genes that do work with albino will also work with toffee.

both roads lead to the same goal: a toffee/candy + extra genes combo that undeniably looks better than any regular candy/toffee.

in the past i was all for mixing it up and building toffee into albino projects, now i changed a bit and say: Both ways lead to the same goal, so choose the path you prefer. i still love toffinos, but noone keeps anyone who has toffees and albinos from throwing out a nice clutch of 100% toffinos every now and then.