I don’t have any hands on experience with blackhead so I’m not much help there. I just wanted to say those pastels especially number 4 do not look like regular single gene pastels to me! Crazy bright and dark black contrast with a lot of tiny freckles in the pattern, very bold and bright, in my opinion something’s going on with possibly both, but definitely number 4! Great looking snakes!
The first three don’t have spider at all (not sure about blackhead) but are definitely either mojave or pastel, or pastave. Number two looks like pastave. Number four and five though are pastel spider. Bumblebees.
Yes, the odds were crazy. Six of the 8 appear to be 3 gene combos. But the scary part is the black heads ability to mask the spider to the point where you might not see it unless you are aware of the pairing. Number 3 blew my mind, I wasn’t expecting a black widow to express as a black head. Based on the research I did before I paired them I would have expected number 3 to appear as a normal and the inherent variably of the pastel adds to the difficulty. I guess it’s scary because this gene combo could be misrepresented when sold, intentionally or accidentally. I guess it’s a lesson in always asking for the pairing. You wouldn’t want to inadvertently breed a widow to anything in the spider complex, black head being the exception. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
The thing about odds is that they are all theoretical but the real world rarely follows them on the short scale. I have hatched clutches that would give you migraines if you considered the “odds”, just how the cosmic dice happened to fall for you in this one case. Repeat the paring next year and watch the breakdown be perfectly in line…
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I think we may have some confusion here… BlkWidow is a BlkPewter Spider. And I am definitely not seeing BlkPastel in any of these animals
I suspect you are calling the BH/Spider a Widow???
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Number three has Mojave in it, so it should never have appeared as a normal
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In terms of things within the complex, you would want to avoid breeding a BH/Spider to Champ, HGW, Spider, and Woma… Maybe Sable and Spotnose too and there are rumours that Sable/Spider and Spot/Spider are not great at surviving. But the others in the complex should be alright (assuming people are not withholding information on other problem combos)
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I also want to add that I have a fairly strong suspicion that you have a fifth morph lurking in this pairing that you are not aware of
Black widow is what combo? This is a major bummer! Wasn’t it RD back in 2005 that tried to hit the first Black Widow which was black head to spider? My bad…what’s this combo called, let me guess black head spider?
Sorry I don’t see the Mojave in number 3. But that would explain why she doesn’t look the way I expected. She looks a lot like her daddy.
If there is a 5th gene I unfortunately can’t pick up on it. Must be subtle, like a het bleeding through? Unfortunately when I picked up the black head pastel and the Mojave spider I … forgot to ask what the pairing was. Wow, my bad again.
RDR was trying to make them (and actually did make the first one but did not know it). I do not remember him calling them BlackWidow though
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Yep, just BH/Spider LOL
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Not a het. Most likely an incomplete-dominant. Can you toss up the whole clutch? Would make it easier for me to evaluate
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I would not call it “bad”, it is not something everyone does. And if the original breeder was less experienced it is possible/likely that they misID’d the animal. Some of these combos get hard to figure out. Heck, I am over a decade into this and I have clutches that make me scratch my head pretty much every year
The “butterfly” headstamp on 4 and 5 in your first post, the strongly green eyes in 5, the “cubic” lateral patterning to 1, 4 and 5, the higher lateral and tone to the one you are calling Bumblebee in your last post are all things you tend to encounter with Enchi in these combination.
Can you elaborate on this? When o hear cubic I think of a cube or in this 2 dimensional case a square. But I can’t see it. My eye sight is terrible, unless I see red I have to use a jeweler’s glass when I pop hatchlings.
