Spinning spiders? - Page 3

Markus Jayne · 02-12-05, 10:53 PM

I think one of the things we are missing here is the fact that we are dealing with mutations. I am certainly not a genetic expert (maybe Randy can step in here) but isn't every snake morph, other than normals, an instance where something went wrong?

I've not heard about the albino bug eye thing. I've seen some bug eye snakes in photos, but they were not albinos.

Mark

JDouglas · 02-12-05, 11:42 PM

The albino bug eye thing was for boas and I have only seen a a few.

The generalizations in this thread are absurd. As far as pieds and het pieds not eating, I purchased a male pied from Anthony McCain, two het females from Cypress Creek and two het females from Exotics By Nature back in the fall. Some said they would be poor feeders and would be stuck on hopper mice. Wrong, ALL of them have switched to rats and at the rate they are growing the male may be big enough to breed now and the females will be big enough next year for sure. I have three different bloodlines and they are all strong eaters.

Jeff_Favelle · 02-13-05, 05:02 AM

Good post Kwok. I think its that sort of insight from people like you and Mark who have actually BRED and hatched Spiders that actually means something. I mean, my Spider is only 5 months old and is 575g and is just wailing on the females. If breeding early (and often) and eating unlike a normal Ball Python is genetically defective, then give me genetically defective any day of the week!!!!

Nice Pied JD!!!

Markus Jayne · 02-13-05, 07:25 AM

Ditto. My pied hets are all great eaters. My pied is a little picky but acceptable.

Mark

hiss-hers pyth · 02-13-05, 08:42 AM

Mark,

Jeff,

David,

Totally agree with you, spiders are a ball python keepers dream come true, they have an unmatched feeding response ( for ball pythons ) which equals to phanominal growth and weight gain. And has everyone has already mentioned increadible breeding prowes, hell when it comes to ball pythons what more could you want, and there increadible looks don't hurt either. We've all seen more posts about stuborn and reluctant feeing ball pythons, than we care to remember, this surely doesn't seem to apply to spiders.

Here is another attestation to the proweses of spider ball pythons. Marc Bouchard and I picked up this little fellow from Mark Mandic a few months ago, and we don't regret it one bit. He weighed 450 grams then, he's now 7 months old and over 800 grams, as never missed a meal, and true to their nature very eager to get with the ladies. He's already bred several of our females this season.

Mark,

I would like to take this oppertunity, to say thank you for one of the most amazing ball pythons in our collection, amongst many others.

Breed on Mark, breed on....!

04 male spider

04 male spider breeding, sorry about the dark pic we didn't use any flash or lighting as not to disturb them.

Regards

Michael

malaysianbloods · 02-13-05, 03:22 PM

That pied looks awesome and all the spiders posted are just amazing. Good luck everyone.

Dave Barsalou · 02-13-05, 05:35 PM

Mine's up to over 500g at about 6mths of age. He came from genes of a wild caught pied same as my albino. He's up over 600g now. From what I've found, different lines have thier own attributes. I sure hope the caramel kink is false, I've got that project underway. For some reason I think the pied must have been tried to different crosses. Garentteed some big breeders have tried. Either it's not compatable or they are holding thier toungues.

Thx
Dave

RandyRemington · 02-14-05, 07:11 AM

Someone mentioned the normal siblings perhaps being as exceptional as the spiders in the eating department, is this the consensus?

I'm no genetics expert but I like observing and I've seen an interesting phenomena with captive breeding in general and especially the dominant morphs.

The original imported spider may well have been an exceptional animal in his own right but I suspect some very nice "normal" females have been breed into this line over the years. Spiders are still a high dollar snake and have been so since the beginning so I suppose the spider males got some of the best of the best normal girls from big collections. If even the normal (i.e. no spider gene) siblings are exceptional maybe the exceptional characteristics of this line aren't directly related to the spider gene - although it certainly doesn't seem to be hurting anything.

Another phenomena I've seen a reporting trend on is for dominant type morph males to breed young and be prolific breeders, notably more so than recessive morph males. I think this is selected for very quickly with dominant type genes. For example, say the fist spider produced 10 sons the first year. Maybe only one of those was an exceptional grower/young breeder and was the only one to produce the following year. If he rivaled his father he might produce half the spiders that year. However, with him being a super young breeder himself he might pass this trait on to 50% of his offspring unlike his father who only passed it to 10% (not exactly sure what complex genetics might cause something like that). Since the super son is fathering half the 2nd year production the rate of super young breeder spiders in the entire year's production has gone up from 10% in year 1 to 25% in year 2. Each year a larger and larger percentage of the spiders are produced by these outstanding young males. Pretty soon you are seeing lots of these unbelievable males that might be the result of several generations in a row of 6-month-old males breeding to the best of the best normal females. Selective breeding in overdrive!

On the pied and pied hets, how many of you have breeding sized females yet? Hopefully those good eating young girls will keep it up at least until maturity.