Clueless...I'm seeing Black Pastels...where's the Super?
Originally that's what I thought as well. Long story but here's most the info:
Long time ago I just happened to be on Fauna and noticed a local ad and contacted the girl. She actually ended up working at one of the petstores I got feeders from so I ended up buying the original female and a male that I turned around and sold. Female had some nice dark coloring and a tear drop shaped spot on her head but I really didn't think much about it.
At the time I had maybe a dozen animals so I bred her to my ghost male to make hets because I didn't have any het ghost females. It wasn't till that clutch hatched that I really wondered what was up. When all the babies were out it was pretty obvious that 4 of them were not like the other one or two (can't remember if the clutch was 5 or 6 right now). They were much more orange and all had the small light tear shaped spot on the top of the head like mom. I kept 3 of the odd looking ones, and sent David Bellis one odd looking one and one normal looking het hypo. I raised up the babies and bred one of the 2 males back to the original female. If anything after raising them up and looking at all the morphs out there I kind of thought they were black pastels and I'd get a solid black snake.
What I got was 0.2 supers, 1.2 huffmans, and a normal or two. One of the supers was a twin with a normal in the same egg. It came out tiny, never fed on it's own, had a hard spot in it's belly around the umbilical cord, and eventually died. But the super that was in its own egg ate like a champ and is about 2500 grams. I put a couple different males in with her this season but doesn't appear that anything took.
The next season I bred the original female to a pin male, and one of the first gen females to one of the first gen males. From the pin breeding I produced 1 pin and 3 what I believe to be pin huffmans because of the color/pattern differences, much more orange and much busier pattern. I've still got 2 of them, one of the female pins and a pair of huffman's went to Ben Renick. From the Huffman to Huffman breeding I got 1 super, 1 huffman, and 2 normals. This super never seemed quite right either. It moved funny sometimes and seemed to have trouble killing pinky/fuzzy rats. It too eventually died.
And Abby has the Gen 2 male.
So over time Below is what I have produced from them. I think David has produced a few and is breeding more this year, I know Abby has a couple clutches from her male, and Ben had been breeding his as well.
0.1 Original female
Gen 1 (original female x ghost)
2.2 Huffmans het ghost
Normal het or two
Gen 2 (original female x Gen 1 male)
0.2 super (50% poss het ghost) - One super died, it was a twin with a normal and was tiny something like 17 grams at birth
1.2 huffmans (50% poss het ghost)
Normal or two
Gen 3 Clutch 1 (original female x pin)
0.3 Pin huffman
1.0 pin
Normal or two
Gen 3 clutch 2 (gen 1 female x gen 1 male)
0.1 Super - Died Never Acted Right
0.1 Huffman
2 Normals
Gen 4 clutch 1 (gen 1 male x normal)
1.2 Huffman
3 normals
Gen 4 clutch 2 (gen 1 female x gen 1 male)
2.1 Super
2.1.1 Huffman (one still in the egg as I type)
3 Normal
Gen 4 clutch 3 (Hypo x gen 1 female)
Still cooking
Gen 4 clutch 4 (YB x original female)
Still cooking
Gen 4 clutch 5 (Lesser x gen 2 female)
Due to be laid next week or so
Here's a picture that might show the differences a little better (as I said I'm terrible photographer). This if from the Gen 2 clutch so it's an old picture. From Left to Right, super, Huffman, normal.
I know it's not a ground breaking morph or anything but after this many years with it would appear it's a co-dom morph where (in my opinion) the het version looks like a black pastel, and the super looks more like a cinnamon. Maybe some of the combos this year will pop out something more drastic, that's why I tried the YB to the original girl. I tried a firefly to the super female but like I said doesn't appear anything is going to come from that.
And I don't call them Huffman's to be cocky or anything. David actually had posted a poll on another forum site a while back to try and pick a name but ever since the Gen 2 clutch where I didn't get a black snake I've just written Huff, Huffman, or Mystery on my cage cards. Before that I just assumed there were black pastels.
Hope that explanation helps some. Thanks for looking.
I think it's pretty clear that they are their own thing by now with all of the clutches you've gotten Chris. I still want to breed a Huffman to a Cinnamon or Black Pastel though to see if maybe they are on the same locus. Would be interesting!
