im curious what kahl is? i know its like not compatible with sharp strains?
Kahl is also known as the original strain of albino. There are two albino strains, not including the T+ (tyronese positive), and it's thought sharp strain may be a t+ because t+ x sharp creates a phenotype called paradigm, I won't get too much into that because there are other people that know more about it than I do. There is a ton of great info about them here:
http://www.basicallyboas.com/secret.html
I don't want to confuse you, so I am only going to talk about sharp and kahl.
A breeder named Peter Kahl (
http://www.pkreptiles.com/) purchased one of the first albino boas that were imported from Colombia. You can read about the history here:
http://www.pkreptiles.com/informationterms/articles/albinoboas.asp
He was able to breed that boa to a normal female creating hets since albino is a recessive gene. He went on to prove out the gene creating the first captive born albino boas. Descendent of those boas are known as original strain or Kahl strain.
Later on, another breeder named Brian Sharp (
http://www.briansharp.com/) got his hands on another imported albino. He proved her out and it turned out that his strain of albino was not compatible with the kahl strain. So those boas are called sharp strain. There is a history of the sharp strains here:
http://www.blumenboas.com/sharpstrain.htm
So there is your Albino Boa 101.
also curious what het means?
Het means heterogeneous and describes the genetic inheritance of certain trains that can be either recessive, dominant or co-dominant. instead of me trying to stumble and explain this stuff, check out this link:
http://www.vmsherp.com/LCGenetics101.htm
and then what is a kahl albino? would that be a snake that wasnt named like a salmon or red tail?
Now you know what a kahl is, an albino. Salmon is a line of hypomelenistic boas (hypo boas). The salmon line was established by a breeder named Rich Ihle (
http://www.salmonboa.com/) and you can read about the history of the salmon boas here:
http://www.salmonboa.com/about.html There are other lines of hypo boas, the other main line is orange tail (OT). A lot of people have worked with hypos through selective breeding to create their own lines like abbys, cherrys, etc. Basically a salmon boa is a hypo boa.
Now when you say 'red tail'.. well there's a mess. Most boas you see in the trade are Colombian boas or Central American boas, also known as 'common boas'. In the pet stores, they are sold as 'red tail boas' simply because it sounds nicer than common boa. These boas fall under the species name: Boa Constrictor imperator (BCi). There are another group of boas under the species name: Boa Constrictor constrictor (BCc) and these are known as "True Red Tail boas" and include boas from the locations of Surinam, Guyana, Peru, Brazil, etc. So 'red tail' isn't a morph or type of boa unless you are talking about BCc. These two subspecies can be interbred but usually that is avoided. You can read more here:
http://www.boa-constrictors.com/en/Boa_constrictor_subspecies
There are also insular island localities of BCi, like hog isle, crawl cay, etc, you can read more about those here:
http://www.riobravoreptiles.com/boas_island.htm
Has your brain exploded yet?
So back to your original question:
BORN FROM A KAHL ALBINO X SALMON HET KAHL ALBINO.
what does your boa look like? One of the parents was an albino and the other was a hypo that carried the recessive albino gene. So the babies would be either sunglows (expressing both of the hypo and albino trait), hypos, albinos or normals. If you have a photo, I'm sure we could help you figure out which type you have.
Hope this info helps! Enjoy your new boa!
-April
Welcome!
