A little back story for Blazing Blizzard project and some questions. Post 1

I started breeding leopard geckos about 4 years ago. I started out with a blizzard male and a het.blizzard female from KelliH at Hisss.net. I bred those and got a male blizzard I named Goliath. Perfect in every way.. not a marking on him nor any yellow at all. I sold the other 3 siblings I got to hatch that year to someone else due to money problems and having to move. When I got back home to VT, I went into a petshop and found a gorgeous Tangerine Tremper albino for $25 with a slightly regen tail. Needless to say I snapped her up (All pictures will follow of all offspring in the project) I paired Tiki (the tangerine albino.. short for Tequila Sunrise) with Goliath when I heard about the blazing blizzard projects. Now, Tiki is the only one who's genetics I don't know all of. KelliH told me the blizzard male and the het.blizzard female both came from blizzard lines with nothing else in them when I bought them. So their offspring Goliath was just a pure blizzard. When mated to Tiki they came up with 3 normals dbl het for blazing blizzard. No bells and whistles at all with them. 2 males and 1 female. I let the one male go and kept the pair to breed. Well, the female failed to thrive in her first few months and I took measures to keep her alive. Now she's fat and happy and putting out eggs for me. Here's where it gets wierd. This year when I put the dbl hets together finally and the eggs started hatching, I got some very wierd looking blizzards and one albino so far. I still have more eggs in the incubator so we're waiting to see if anymore of these odd blizzards show up. Now, I want some opinions. I've hatched blizzards and none have had any pattern to them whatsoever. Not a single spot or darkness to them. Just pure white with the blue eyes. But, the baby blizzards from this dbl het pairing have both had head markings. Below are the pictures. I want some people's opinions on possibilities here.

Okay First the mother of the dbl hets. Tequila Sunrise





Now the father of the dbl hets. Goliath





The female "dbl" het: Malice





The Male "dbl" het: Mystic




Continued in the next post

Part 2:

Now for the resulting offspring. The darker of the 2 recently died from aspirating a dose of jumpstart I was giving him. He never absorbed his yolk from the egg so was very weak for the entire 2 weeks he lived. I did everything I could to keep him alive.

This is the darker one. Sorry for the slightly blurry pics:Na'amaa





And the still living clutchmate of the above one: Charon







Thats all of them and I'd like some opinions from people here. I've never seen a true blizzard born with that kind of patterning on his head. The Dark one was amazing really and I was sooo hoping it would survive. My new project was going to be a pure black blizzard starting with him and selective breeding. I can only hope I get another one like him at least.

Anyway, I would like to see any and all opinions from people, especially those who have done blazing blizzard projects and if they've had anything similar pop out. A friend of mine pointed out that the darker one looked alot like Geckosetc's patternless mack snows they hatched this year though I know the genetics aren't there for it.. or at least I don't think so. I know they look somewhat patternless, somewhat blizzardish but not really either of both and Charon's pattern is just deepening.. so.. any opinions/ideas etc on whats happening would be great.

By the way. Incubation temps were 82 degrees throughought incubation. The albino that came from the same parents looks perfectly normal in all respects right now.. but I'm not sure if he'll stay that way or not.

Sorry for the long post and all the pictures but I figured everyone would need as much info as I could possibly give them to form any opinions.

Thanks for your help
Melinda Goodrich
RavenCrest Reptiles

Could be a normal patternless, or just a weird blizzard. Possibly a banana blizzard.

I think its safe to assume your Albino is Het for Patternless, and both offspring were tripple hets. The second baby, looks like a Patty so it could be a Banana Blizzard (both Patternless and Blizzard)

Sorry, but what does het mean?

Het means Heterzygous. Which means it carries one alele for a certain trait, and does not express that trait. So in other words, it carries a ceartin morph, such as patternless in this case.

A Het ( short for heterozygous)carries a 'hidden' gene, like Albino. Meaning it looks normal, but can produce Albinos, when bred to another Het, or an Albino.

I'd like to see what everyone thinks the dark one is also as another may eventually pop up. He was gorgeous and those photos do him no justice.. he had the same head pattern.. only in black...going down his neck.. and the rest of him was this really blue/grey color until you got to his tail. His eyes were amazing.. pure black through and through.. Charon has the usual blizzard's eyes.. but Na'amaa didn't. He had pure black eyes. I'm hoping I get another one of them only healthier because I'd love to work on a completely patternless black leo..

Thanks for the explanation, and that black Leo would be AWSOME!!!

Nice geckos. I agree with Dan. My guess is that you have a banana blizzard on your hands. Very pretty.

wayne