How to make butter corn snakes

So I’ve decided that I’m going to be trying to get the most vibrant yellows as an end aim for my breeding. My understanding is that Amel/Snow breeding to a caramel will give you some butters. But when inputted into the calculator this doesn’t seem to be the case. Any help with this will be appreciated! A good base set of butters would set me on my way, I want to produce one myself rather than buying one. Thanks.

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Hi @conorpoole1

Butter is a morph combo of Amel and caramel, see here is a screenshot from MorphMarket

Amel and Caramel are both recessive genes so you would have to at least have two 100% dh Amel Caramel.
This would be the result of this pairing :arrow_up:

Caramel 100% het Amel x Amel 100% het Caramel

This would be the result of this pairing :arrow_up:

Butter x Caramel het Amel

This would be the result of the pairing :arrow_up:

Butter x Amel het Caramel

This would be the result of the pairing :arrow_up:

Butter x Butter

This would be the result of the pairing :arrow_up:

I would recommend reading some of the basic genetics conversations on here.
A very simple beginning one would be the fact that recessive genes require two copies from the parents to be a visual representation of that gene. If only one copy gets into the baby it would be called a het (heterozygous) and it would look normal.
Codominant genes are a little bit different. If one copy gets passed on, it will look like that morph, but if the baby gets two it will create what’s called a super form (sometimes super forms have different names) and it will look different from the single copy but also not normal.

Ah I see what I’ve done now, it didn’t register in my brain that they were obviously codominant traits. So my two current corns : normal het anery het amel poss het hypo and snow would produce some amel, from there I would then have to breed the amel with a corn het for caramel? To produce an amel 100% het caramel to then breed that with a caramel 100% het amel? Being a student in biology I should definitely brush up on how genetics work :sweat_smile:

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You always could consider buying an Amel het Caramel later.

I’m just saying if your goal is butter corns then you may want to consider buying two new one for this project. You were talking to generations at least your way. That is many years.

With my boa project I bought a double visual recessive instead of starting with hets. I did the math when considering purchasing the female that I have now, and I saved like 17 years lol :joy:

Yea I suppose I could just keep my current ones as pets and start fresh with a new pairing. Do you know of anyone who’s tried to work with yellows in corn snakes and the possible addition of black pigments? I’d really love to create a ‘lightning’ corn :sweat_smile: would be so cool!

As for breeders, I can’t because of the community guidelines. But a wonderful place to look is MorphMarket.com
If you want yellow with darker pigment then go look at honey or Saffron

Honey is an interesting morph, maybe those colours could be developed with a change in pattern. Thanks for the help!

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I hope it really does help you make decisions that will further your dreams :heart:

If you want to combine yellow and black, you do not want to get hung up on butters. Butters are amelanistic: they can’t express black pigment.