honduran breeding projects

[milki]

i am intresting in hondurans milksnake morphs for a long time now.
and i understand all the gentic stuff, i want to buy a pair or two and to start a gentic project.
i have about 600 dollar what do u guys think i sould get. to start the most intresting coloney of hondurans morphs.

thank you guys alot

[MarcB]

Well, it depends on what end project you would like to work towards?

Do you like Snow, Ghost, Hybino or a combination of all of these?

I am working towards Homozygous Double-Hets, a Hypo Double-Het Snow for instance is the Key ingredient because once these are paired, the Albinos from this clutch are all "Hybino" and the Triple Homo which should resemble a Snow will in fact be the elusive "Pearl".

You will also need to figure out how many hondos you want in your colony, you mentioned a pair or two in your post, in that case you would need to start with Double-Hets at a minimum. Nothing wrong with strating with possible hets but results take much longer...

In any case, hondurans are fun, popular and great captives...

Good luck

[vanderkm]

Hondos are great snakes to work with and lots of genetic potential for some interesting combos. Like Marc says - mostly depends on what you like and you might have a better idea of the market potential and prices in your area - not sure if you are in Canada - so hard to know what your $600 would buy.

In my opinion the best bet for the money now is double het females (for snow or ghost) and a male that is one morph you are most interested in (e.g. albino), and het for what the female is (anery or hypo) - because of the diversity of offspring you can get from a pair. I would actually prefer to have several double het females to go with comparable males.

Triple hets could be even more fun, but I think there is some risk in having too many het genes - in some species it is an issue to get lines free of certain recessives now. The price and availability of triple hets is also an issue.

Best of luck with your choice - look forward to seeing pics,

mary v.