Hi there all,
I was lucky enough to get a pair of visual Wierdos from VMS before he retired. These adults, now named Padme and Anakin, are super cool snakes. As far as I can tell, the Wierdo gene affects them by taking the background from orange to a pale yellow (mostly in Padme, who is also Tessera) and by muting the colors scale-by-scale because the tip of each scale is lighter than the base (mostly Anakin) and I call him my “stonewashed denim” snake because of it.
Of course, over the years I’m excited to help introduce this new gene to the market. And I’d love to talk to anyone else who is working with it.
Now comes my ask of you guys. Can y’all help me confirm the morphs of my new Wierdo babies? Padme and Anakin came with the following hets each: Anery, amel OR ultra, and 50% motley. But wouldn’t you know that the younglings are little Wierdos!..
Have these babies had their first shed yet? Color can change pretty drastically after the first shed. I don’t think either of those are amels, it looks like they both have some melanin. But I definitely need to see more pictures, post shed, and it would help to show pictures of the eyes and bellies too - all in natural lighting, ideally. The last picture does look like a tessera and a weird motley.
(Also I would love to see the parents!)
I agree, neither of those look like straight Amel to me either. Maybe some Ultra, maybe some Anery, maybe something else. I also made some nice VMS pickups last year. As I recall, Sean wasn’t sure about just which genes were present in his Weirdos. That definitely makes IDing the offspring more of a challenge.
I’m glad you are working with them. They have an intriguing look. It will be interesting to watch what you/ they produce.
I will make sure to post more pictures as they grow: I think that they all have had their first shed but I keep them together for a week after hatching so it’s kind of hard to tell who’s who. Here’s one freshly shed tessera, beginning to show the primrose-yellow background! And the second picture is where the Odds Gods were kind to me- an ultramel anery tessera, maybe even motley!
Very pretty babies!
Motley and Tessera usually gives a surprisingly cleanly striped snake, oddly enough. With whatever is happening with the Weirdo stuff, I am not going to venture a guess on that point. Lol
It’s time for some new Wierdo pictures! Part one: anery tessera, ultramel anery tessera (?) and another ultramel anery tessera.
Why are the colors of the last two so different?
That last one! It is so gorgeous, you definitely don’t want to keep that one 
.
Lol, I’m pretty sure that if I do have any holdbacks, the ultramel anery tessera will be it.
They are indeed. Pretty ones, too. 
I really like the pattern on the Anery Tessera. Very unique, very much in keeping with the Weirdo line.
Are you sure there’s no Hypo in the mix? The lighter one looks to me like it’s got Hypo along with its Anery.
Hey y’all! Nine of the 11 baby Weirdos have now gotten their “school pictures” taken and have been posted in my store- Tennessee Cornsnakes. The other two had skipped meals, so I’m going to hang on to them a few more weeks.
I just wanted to thank everyone who looked at my pictures and chipped in on ID. I’ve still got things to figure out, like the ultramel vs hypo question. Since ultramel is known in the snakes, I’m going with that. But maybe next year I will make crosses to a lavender het hypoberry/ het anery pair…
I don’t know for sure. I bought the snakes as het ultramel, but Sean had said that the animals were “dumped on his doorstep” and he didn’t know all of the hets they might have.
Apologies for the question but here in the UK we don’t have anyone working with the Weirdo gene as far as I’m aware. I haven’t seen any of the larger breeders working with it.
What differentiates this gene? Is it thay the colour looks washed out? Almost as if they’re about to go into shed with the base of the scale slightly darker than the tip?