A few keepers from this season...

[Kara]

It has been a really great year for new snakes here at The Blood Cell, and we're thankful to have these little gems to add to our future breeding stock:

Female Sideswipe-TBC Ghost Borneo STP from our Sideswipe x Sideswipe breeding. Time will tell whether she's a homozygous Sideswipe, to boot.


Female from TBC Fire Hazard x TBC Panic Attack. This is the first time we've bred the TBC Raspberry & TBC Manic Panic lines together, and we're just beyond tickled with how these kids are coloring up so far.


TBC Sherman, holdback male from our TBC Tank x Cinder clutch (Sumatran STPs). These babies are soooo dark already!!


Male from TBC Batteries Not Included x TBC Suckerpunch. This clutch was the result of breeding our TBC Manic Panic line into some linebred Marter stock also hatched here, and again, the results certainly didn't disappoint!



Enjoy!

[DNACurtusK]

Nice holdbacks!

Out of curiousity, Kara. What makes the sideswipe.. a sideswipe? I guess I'm curious as to the origin of the animals and the project itself. They look spot on to some of the superstripe het. ghost leopard carriers we have. Whats in the make-up of these animals? You've piqued my interest greatly!

[Kara]

Our Sideswipe project originates from a female that was imported as a hatchling over a decade ago. In early 2008 she was bred to El Dorado, who is a ghost/ultra type Borneo. That breeding produced a small clutch with an almost even ratio of striped to non-striped offspring right out of the gate. TBC Spot On & TBC Strata were our holdback animals from the original clutch. As you can see below, they have produced a high percentage of striped offspring, and the ghost influence from El Dorado is clearly evident in some of the more unusual animals in this clutch.

Grand-dam of 2014 offspring (Founding WC sideswipe female)


Grandsire of 2014 offspring (also imported)


Sire of 2014 offspring


Dam of 2014 offspring


Our next goal with this project is to determine whether or not there is a homozygous Sideswipe. We are holding back some of the more extreme animals from our 2014 clutch, and will raise them to breed to unrelated, non-striped Borneos in the hopes of producing a clutch of 100% Sideswipes. While various striped genes are quite common in Python breitensteini, we think it would be pretty fantastic to have a proven homozygous striped animal that produces a relatively predictable number of striped offspring.

Entire 2014 clutch (pictured below as fresh hatchlings):

[DNACurtusK]

Looks like you hit your super!

I'm sure you know which one I'm talking about!

It appears the genetic stripe gene is bound to the sideswipe. An isolated super would be neat.