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Inquiry: Mike's Motleys

M

midnightline

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I'm debating buying a few cornsnakes from them.  What are some of your experiences with them, good or bad?  (people who've had a personal experience only, please... not hearsay)




Kat Hall
 
We have done business with Mike.  He is in our area and we have met with him to purchase and trade snakes.  He was very nice and his animals were well represented.  We would not hesitate doing business with him again.  Hope this helps, have a great day!

Brian and Laura Hamel
www.tribalpropagation.com
 
Mike is a great guy to deal with. I purchased a pair of his breeder corns last year and they produced 16 fertile eggs for me this year. You wont be disappointed.

Michelle Heart
Creatures of the Night
www.creaturesofthenight.com
 
I have a handful of corns from him...he has great stock and is a pleasure to deal with. I always keep an eye out for his ads.
 
Mike Shriver is one of the good guys.  We always spend a lot of time talking at the shows and he strikes me as being very honest and meticulous about details.  I seldom buy snakes any longer, but I would have no hesitation at all about buying something from him.
 
I have bought from him and sold to him also and was very pleased both ways. <img src="http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':D'>
 
If you ask me, Mike is one of the best corn breeders out there. I bought some of the nicest corns ever from him. I will never forget the Caramel Motley corn that I got from him. I have been in the herp trade for over 13 years, and have seen a lot of corns, and Mikes are by far the nicest!!!

I highly recommend him to anyone one!!

<img src="http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'>  <img src="http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'>

Ricks Reptiles/ Ricks Steward
 
I purchased a snake from Mike last weekend and was able to pick it up in person to avoid shipping. The snake was healthy, correctly sexed and well represented. It's already fed for me on frozen/thawed despite being in shed.
This was a very pleasant transaction and I wouldn't hesitate to do business with Mike Shriver again in the future.
 
Can't say my experience with him was the best... he shipped a day late (it was only after I asked him whether he'd shipped the day he was supposed to that he told me that he didn't... -I- had to ask).

As an addendum, the snake in question also proved not to be carrying one of the genes I had bought it for (I had been after a hypo A motley... it was not homozygous for hypo A... -- whether it's homozygous for some other form of hypo or if the hypo look is just appearance, I'll have to wait a few years to determine...).

Anyway... I personally would not buy from him again, reguardless of what he was selling, as he did not conduct himself in a very professional manner reguarding the whole shipping thing.

-Kat Hall
 
I buy from Mike in the last 3 years and never have a problem with any of the deals. Mike is a GOOD GUY and I will deal with him at any time.
 
I bought a beautiful pastel motley from mike she is the prize of my female corns and her eggs will hatch any day!! good guy.Great animals.

Jeremiah Ronsonet
Diablo Snake Farm
 
As an addendum, the snake in question also proved not to be carrying one of the genes I had bought it for (I had been after a hypo A motley... it was not homozygous for hypo A... -- whether it's homozygous for some other form of hypo or if the hypo look is just appearance, I'll have to wait a few years to determine...).
Click to expand...

I don't think you can hold that against Mike. This is just a taste of what is yet to come working with Hypo corns of any flavor. We don't even know how many Hypo genes there are floating around in all of our combined stock. I can easily identify evidence for at least five hypo-like genes just in my stock alone, but I couldn't tell you which ones are compatible with the others.

And I certainly cannot guarantee that ANY of them bred outside of their own siblings will produce predictable results. Matter of fact, even bred with their own siblings and the possibility that one or more other hypo genes might be in the mix, I would be hesitant to make any predictions concerning hypomelanism any longer in any respect. Who knows what sort of interactions may result from mixing those genes together?
 
Rich,

I believe Kat bought the animal with the understanding that it actually was homozygous for hypo A. That being part of the purchased "comodity," I think that would be Mike's fault if it is indeed not homozygous for that gene. Had he said it was hypo and left it at that, I would agree with you, but Kat bought a particular animal for a particular reason, and Mike did not provide that.

I understand mistakes can take place, but if you sell an animal with a specific designation, it needs to have the specified characteristic. If you cannot guarantee the results, you cannot sell it as if you could. THAT'S Kat's problem with the hypo A gene scenario, as far as I undertand.
 
The point I am making here is that Mike probably did not know that the genetic strain we have all been calling Hypomelanism 'A', is composed of mulitple incompatible lookalike Hypomelanistic genes scattered across a wide variety of individual animals, and not just a single genetic trait. Mike has been working a lot with the Ultra Hypo line. Over the last couple of years, I have bred that strain into several examples of what I thought were all the same line (Hypo 'A') of hypomelanism and got normals as a result in some instances, and Hypos in others. In still other animals, I got two distinctly different looking Hypos in the offspring.

In another example, for years I have been selling Miami Phase het for crimsons. In many cases, these were the result of breeding what I thought were two Crimsons together, but when I got all normal Miami Phase, I just assumed that I mistakenly marked an exceptionally brightly colored Miami Phase as a Crimson. Last year it happened again, and I took a REALLY close look at those Crimsons. They are DEFINITELY Crimsons (hypomelanistic Miami Phase) but apparently they are two different lines of Hypomelanism at work. So in effect, those Miami Phase het for Crimsons I have been selling certainly ARE het for Crimson. Two genetic lines of it, as a matter of fact. They are apparently SO similar in appearance that I could not tell one from the other.

I have also gotten some rather confusing results from the Hypo Lavender project, which may be somewhat explained if the multiple lines of Hypo are considered.

I think VERY few people understand this, much less what it means for the future.

Point is, you can't blame Mike for something he COULDN'T have known at the time. And the scenario that Kat got caught up in will take place MANY MANY times in the near future to MANY MANY people.
 
Rich,

I understand what you're saying, and I cannot judge what Mike knew or didn't know. However, I think Kat specifically asked for a hypo A animal. That's what she paid for, and she didn't get it.

I too have hypos (some from you) for sale. If someone wants a hypo, I'll sell it to them. If someone calls wanting a hypo type a,b,c,d, or e specifically, I can't help that person, because I have no idea which one(s) I have. Even if I knew for a fact that a pair of mine were compatible, I have no idea which strain they have in common.

However, if someone specifically asked me for a type A hypo, and I sold them one of my Silver Queen Ghosts, it WOULD be my fault if that particular animal turned out to be hypo type D. The fact that I did not realize I wasn't providing what was paid for is not, in my opinion, anyone's fault but mine, in that situation.
 
But Darin that IS the point! No one can now say exactly what a type 'A' Hypomelanistic corn actually is. Can you? Heck, for that matter, how do we KNOW that the animal Mike sold wasn't truly a "type 'A'" Hypo (whatever the heck that is) and the one Kat has is the one that is something else?

What Mike probably thought Kat was asking, and possibly Kat herself thought she was asking for, was that she wanted a Hypomelanistic corn snake that was NOT the type 'B' that we also refer to as the Sunkissed (or Sunkist) line. By definition, from what Mike and Kat probably knew at the time, if the animal was NOT a Type 'B', then by the definition at that time, it HAD to be a type 'A' Hypo.

Mike just shouldn't be dinged because he is not Ms. Cleo and didn't have psychic abilities enough to determine what is now 'known', that wasn't even guessed at earlier. It's not like he didn't know something that was common knowledge to other people. There was simply no likelihood that he COULD have known about it.

Anyone going into the genetics of the corn snake and buying animals that thinks this is all starkly black and white is in for a severely rude awakening.

It is my personal opinion that we are now into the wild west stage of corn snake genetics. And you know what they say about how to recognize the pioneers, don't you? Yes, this is going to get real messy. But you can either brave the arrows and have some exciting fun at this, or stay at home or on the sidelines and wait to see how many pioneers come back alive before venturing out into this world.
 
I agree with you on this: I don't think ANYONE should be selling a hypo animal as "Hypo (x)" until this is all much better understood.

I can also see where it is that Kat's version of hypo A and Mike's version of the same idea (neither of them being the "sunkissed" brand of hypo) being incompatible could be a situation of honest representation, as well. That being the case, you're right. Mike shouldn't be called to the carpet for that one.

I guess I really don't want to see anymore of this Hypo A, B, C... stuff anymore until we have some clarity to talk about. It's going to take someone (I wonder who . . .) to stand up and say:

"I have a breeding colony of compatible hypos here (there may be 2, 6, or 20 snakes in this "colony"...it doesn't matter, it has to start somewhere), and these animals all express (fill in the blank) brand of hypomelanism. Who knows what other brands they may carry, but they are all homozygous for 'My' brand."

Then, at least, there would be a basis, a ground zero, from which to work outwardly. Maybe then we could begin to map out what lines have what genes and begin trying to separate this spaghetti bowl of genetics?
 
To be honest, my negative post reguarding him is almost soley about the whole shipping thing. The gene thing was more of a frustrating sidenote...

Anyway, I wish I hadn't deleted the emails from the transaction (happened a year ago), as his response to my stating his shipping was less than professional was as much of a reason why I won't deal with him as the actual incident was itself...

Rich, I think there might be another thread about Mike on the BOI somewhere, because I seem to recall posting the same complaint on another thread when the subject came up... Might want to merge them?

-Kat Hall
 
OH BOY!! Genetics!

The other thing we must remember when dealing with "hypo" is this trait is not like many others we are used to dealing with. For example, albino=no pigment. In that case the gene(s) which normally code for whichever pigment is absent is not present. With hypomelanism the gene(s) coding for black is still there, but for some reason the effect is muted. If the gene(s) were totally gone then the animal would be an albino.

That being said, the muting of the black pigment gene(s), could be caused by a ton of different factors. Factors which may not be present in the offspring. Factors could include hormones (sex and others), temp of incubation, further gene mutation, or even gene mutation back towards the wild type. Hell, one could even make the argument that the food being fed to the mice producing the pinkies which the babies eat could have an effect.

I have a snow corn that when bred to a normal corn produces some of the most incredible hypos you've ever seen. Her form of hypomelanism seems to be dominate, as she always produces these killer hypos no matter how dark the normal corn is.
 
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