Anthrax x Dwarf/Super Dwarf Retics? - Help Me Decide On A Pair?

[Addiction]

I've been planning on trying to find a pair that are like 66% - 75% SD. A percentage where the females would top out around 8' - 10' (max) and males 7' - 8', etc. Something with a little size, but yet very handle-able... Wouldn't that size range fall somewhere within the 66% - 75% SD range?

Actually the percentage matters much less than people think (it's almost a marketing thing at this point imo). The actual parental sizes matter a lot. There are 75% SD females that are still over 12'. There are also 25% SD females that are under 8 foot. While percentage comes into play some, the actual genealogy and lineage of the animal matters much more. I have a 50% female who is 4 years old, healthy and fed well and she is maybe 7.5 feet, give or take a few inches. I have personally seen a 68.75% female that was ~13 feet. Whereas I have a 25% SD that was produced by Garrett Hartle that is almost 8 months old, fed a large meal every 5-7 days, and is probably 2 feet (still smaller than a male mainland hatchling as I have those too). And he is 25% Kayuadi at that, which is considered more "dwarf" than SD overall. So when you are shopping for SD's, make sure to find out the size of the parents, their age and their feeding schedule. You will thank yourself in the long run, trust me.


Just for reference, here is a picture of me with my 50% SD female GC Het Purple. As you can see, she is still very manageable (I am 5'7" for reference), being less than 8 foot and already breeding size and age. She is a F1 cross at that (mom was a pure SD ~7-8 foot and dad was a pure mainland GC Purple Albino that was ~7 foot). This is an example of what I mean when I say parental sizes matter more than percentages. There are also some with the field of thought that the babies tend to get more of the size from mom and the looks from dad.





P.S. I was doing a monthly mouth inspection as I do with all my retics to make sure everything looks in order (no signs of pushing, stomatitis, RI etc.). So please don't mind how I am holding her head. It looks rougher than it was.

[Aedryan Methyus]

Thanks so much for all of your valuable insight. You guys are great! It definitely sounds like the parent's sizes, ages and feeding schedules should be some of the biggest considerations with these guys. Also, I have seen Jay Brewer of Prehistoric pets stress many times how you can control the growth of even pure mainlands to however large or small you want depending on prey size and feeding schedule. I have pretty much seen that myself with my Boas, so I think that is a huge factor. I keep stressing how I don't really want anything over 10', but I sorta keep forgetting how even 12' or 14' Retics aren't really THAT big and are still very handle-able if you keep them slender, as they naturally should be. I guess my primary concerns are:

- I don't want to get into keeping animals that would require enclosures any larger than 6' x 3' x 18" as adults.
- I don't really want to have animals that require prey any larger than jumbo size rats, but if I would need to have a few breeder rabbits in the future to keep a few (very few) of my snakes fed in the future I would be alright with that.
- Marketability... Snakes (even Ball Pythons) have an extremely limited, niche target market as far as average pet snake buyers go and I think the larger the snakes get the smaller the market for them gets. I think once snakes start getting larger than the 6' range is probably when a lot of people start being hesitant about wanting to have them. I do feel that the dwarf and super dwarf Retics might be somewhat of an exception, though. Especially for those, who favor Boas over Ball Pythons. Aside from their irresistible beauty, I think their larger size wouldn't be as off-putting since they can be kept more slender and handle-able at larger sizes. I also feel that the dwarfs and super dwarfs will become (if they haven't already become?) extremely desirable within the more serious snake collector/breeder/hobbyist area of the market.
- Affordability... I don't mind starting off with a pair of nice, afforfable co-dominant Hets (though, I prefer 100% Hets) or lower priced recessive gene animals in order to be able to start producing what I really want within a couple/few years time. At the same time, as much as i'm sure all of us would love to be producing $1,000.00/$2,500.00/$5,000.00/$10,000.00 high end offspring, how many people out there can afford to dish out that kind of money on snakes? I sure can't! So, I would be fine with producing some lower to mid-price range offspring with the first clutch.

Here's a current photo of my retic. Her name is Lucy, she is a female and 50% Jampea (dwarf) and 50% mainland. She is just shy of 2 years old now and probably close to 30 pounds. I put a sharpie marker in the photo for a size comparison so you can get an idea of how big she is. She is a 'White Phase' (Clark) albino. The albino is associated with the purple and lavender albino. The Purple phase has two copies of the gene, the Lavender has one and the white phase has zero. It's kind of a separate but linked gene. So if you bred a purple albino with a normal you would get one copy of the albino gene and one copy of the purple gene, neither would be visual. If you bred a lavender albino with a normal you would get one copy of the albino gene (het) and a 50% chance of getting one copy of the purple gene.

When she was young I fed her pretty heavily and she probably grew twice as fast as others I have seen. Now that she is pretty much slowed down growing I feed her a large or jumbo rat once every 2-3 weeks and she is satisfied.

Also keep in mind that the more Mainland blood in the snake the more mellow and easy going it is. Super Dwarf makes them a bit skittish and aggressive by nature. You can work with them to get it out of their system but it comes naturally with Mainland blood. Also keep in mind that if you have a pure super dwarf you won't have any morphs at all. All of the color / pattern morphs come from crossing with Mainland. To reduce the % mainland you have to breed back to super dwarf. So to get this snake they probably bred a pure Jampea to an albino Mainland. Then bred the offspring together to get the visual albino.

The markings and colors on that girl are INSANE! Her side markings look like little crowns. It doesn't get much more majestic than that! lol If I had a girl like that I would name her Tiara...

And, I agree with you about the limited number of mutations available with the pure super dwarfs, cchardwick. I definitely want at least some percentage of mainland. As Sauzo suggested, I definitely think something in the 50% + SD range is the way to go for me...

Actually the percentage matters much less than people think (it's almost a marketing thing at this point imo). The actual parental sizes matter a lot. There are 75% SD females that are still over 12'. There are also 25% SD females that are under 8 foot. While percentage comes into play some, the actual genealogy and lineage of the animal matters much more. I have a 50% female who is 4 years old, healthy and fed well and she is maybe 7.5 feet, give or take a few inches. I have personally seen a 68.75% female that was ~13 feet. Whereas I have a 25% SD that was produced by Garrett Hartle that is almost 8 months old, fed a large meal every 5-7 days, and is probably 2 feet (still smaller than a male mainland hatchling as I have those too). And he is 25% Kayuadi at that, which is considered more "dwarf" than SD overall. So when you are shopping for SD's, make sure to find out the size of the parents, their age and their feeding schedule. You will thank yourself in the long run, trust me.

Just for reference, here is a picture of me with my 50% SD female GC Het Purple. As you can see, she is still very manageable (I am 5'7" for reference), being less than 8 foot and already breeding size and age. She is a F1 cross at that (mom was a pure SD ~7-8 foot and dad was a pure mainland GC Purple Albino that was ~7 foot). This is an example of what I mean when I say parental sizes matter more than percentages. There are also some with the field of thought that the babies tend to get more of the size from mom and the looks from dad.





P.S. I was doing a monthly mouth inspection as I do with all my retics to make sure everything looks in order (no signs of pushing, stomatitis, RI etc.). So please don't mind how I am holding her head. It looks rougher than it was.

I would love to find a pair that would top out at the size of your girl there, Addiction! That would be ideal!

Thanks again for sharing all of your knowledge and insight, guys. It is greatly appreciated! I have already turned this into a long post, but I wanted to include the following videos by Cody Conway in this discussion, because I think they are the most informative dwarf/super dwarf Retic videos out there. By the way, I can't seem to find a website for Cody to see if he has any animals for sale. Do any of you happen to know him or know where I might find any animals he might have available? Does he have a company name, perhaps? I'm not even sure if he is even still working with these animals since his most recent video seems to be from 3 years ago...

[Aedryan Methyus]

[Aedryan Methyus]

[Sauzo]

From what i have seen, Cody aka Reptile Expert on the forums here has moved more into HOTs over retics now.

[Aedryan Methyus]

Thanks, Sauzo. Is that his exact name here on the forum? I did a member search for "Reptile Expert" and the results said that is was an invalid username... Please forgive my ignorance, but what does H.O.T. stand for? Out of curiosity I did a search on Google for "hot snakes" and all that comes up is websites for a band called "Hot Snakes"... In the urban dictionary, the definition of Hot Snakes is; The fecal matter typical of the morning after a heavy night of drinking. Resembles long thin coils of a snake and usually "hot" when coming out (think spicy food.) LOL!

[jmcrook]

Hot just refers to venomous snakes.


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[Aedryan Methyus]

Ohhhhh! Yeah, okay... I've heard that term before from a local breeder friend of mine... lol There are definitely some beautiful venomous snakes, but, man... I just never saw any sense in working with them. That's a whole other topic, though...

[Sauzo]

His forum name here is Reptileexpert, one word. And yeah, there are lots of aweomse looking hots. I'm still kicking around the idea of a gila monster as like i've said, i've always wanted one since i was a kid. They are legal here so thats what sparked the interest again haha. I just need to wait a few months for babies. I've already seen a few breeders show their babies being born. And like Jacob said, HOT just means venomous stuff.

[cchardwick]

Those super dwarf retics at three years old are still pretty small, maybe even smaller than a boa constrictor of the same age? Personally I'd like my retics to get a bit bigger and more impressive. I really like the size that Lucy is at, I would be happy if she stayed about the same size or slightly bigger but not too much bigger. She is still small enough to where I can handle her by myself but big enough to be incredibly impressive. After seeing the video of a three year old 50% super dwarf I'm not sure I want that much SD in my snakes, I prefer a snake that is a bit bigger than a boa.