Ah, the controversial Silkback dragon convo.
Silks are made by breeding two incomplete dominant leatherback animals. It’s the homozygous form of the mutation.
They actually don’t require that much additional care. People overcare quite a bit. You don’t need to have sherpa blankets as a “substrate” or remove anything with corners out of the enclosure. You shouldn’t be lathering them up with lotion, it can actually cause more harm/shedding difficulty than good. It can even cause bacterial infections. Toes and tails should be paid special attention to durring shedding. Vegetable glycerin is good to use to assist with shedding difficulty.
They do dehydrate faster than normal dragons.
They absolutely should not be bred. Not even the males. The scales of the female can tear up their undersides.
They should not be produced as the sole reason of a pairing.
Out of 16000 eggs we produced last season, we produced a couple silkback animals. We go out of our way to not produce them. Sometimes we need certain line crosses to continue with a project, and the two perfect animals happen to be leather. When we do, we give them away for free to certain people we know understand the Husbandry parameters of the morph.
They aren’t as forgiving Husbandry wise as regular scale or leatherback animals. That’s the problem with them. A lapse in Husbandry that a regular bearded would be “ok” with, will kill a silk.
They are pets. Well bred and taken care of silks have a comparable life span to the average dragon.
Anyways, that’s my two cents.
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