Snows
Just my two cents worth...
I think there is a large variety of line-bred snows and like the SHTCT, the quality and color varies. Many will yellow to some degree as they get older and bigger, but I have some that have stayed true snow as does Albey. I don't think that makes them a dominant line as they would probably produce pastel or yellowish colored offspring if bred to the SHTCT, for example. I would venture to guess the same would be true regarding TUG's "dominant" snows. And, you're correct, in that I've never seen any of the nice "dominant" snows for sale on TUG, just lower quality offspring which makes me question just how dominant their line of breeders are. I'm not trying to flame Craig, just don't know much about where his snows came from, and how mcuh he's outcrossed them to prove out the dominance in the line. Maybe he's keeping his nicer hatchlings? I dunno.
An albino snow. Now, that IS cool. Nice pictures, too. Wow!
I have bred snows for the past few years, and some I have gotten from Albey, and some of my early snows I bought from Danny Joiner of JustGeckos -- I don't think he's breeding/selling herps anymore. It's interesting because, from what I remember, A-1 is where Danny and Albey both got many of their snows. I took one of the snow females I bought from Danny -- she's a snow but is more hypermelanisitc in appearance, and oddly enough, she has what looks like a stripe pattern down her back. I bred her with a leucistic male that I had purchased several years ago from ProExotics and produced two snow colored females. They were alot less hypermelanistic than their mother and showed more snow. I then took one of the females this year and mated her with my Super snow male and produced two Super snow hatchlings. Both were born sickly, malformed or premature, I'm not sure which, but both died within the first couple of weeks. One thing I am sure of, though, is that they were Supers. They looked lkind of like Blizzard babies but they had all black eyes. I suspect somewhere in the genetics of the Super, there is a common thread with that of the leucistic and the Blizzard. I also suspect the Super is a very in-bred morph. By that, what I mean is that the bloodline is weak from a lot of in-breeding, which I believe results in a smaller, frailer strain -- lot's of defects, sickly, etc. I've heard from other breeders who have experienced similar problems with Super x Super breeding. The challenge will be getting new blood bred into the Super to strengthen the bloodline.
I also have been working on a few project snows (one female and two males)from Albey that were the result of breeding a line-bred snow female with a large Fasciolatus snow male. These have the potential to be a bigger strain of snow. One of my males is 100 grams, has some pastel and white coloring, while the other nicer looking male is 85 grams and all snow and the female is 76 grams and all snow. All are about 8 months old.
If anyone would like to see pictures of any of the geckos I've mentioned above, please let me know (
[email protected])
Tony
