Long story, sorry.
We got this male, sold to us as a mahogany chocolate butter a few years ago. He’s throwing crazy babies that shouldn’t be possible. Yes, we are doing a shed test (we hoped to wait for rgi to get mahogany on the genetic list, but we’ve waited for a year already and we need to confirm other possibilities).
Previous breeders state that he is what he was sold as, just like his father and his father’s father…etc
We’re pretty sure after this second clutch that he is either cinnamon or black pastel, now we’re just trying to figure out if he has mahogany at all. The babies I think are chocolate are really dark, though the last clutch looked like there might have been mahogany.
So here is Erebus, best pictures I have
Adult:
Baby:
From his breeder (with his father)
The mother of both clutches
Cinnamon pastel
Babies from last year’s clutch
Updated pictures of the 3 we kept
And lastly, this year’s babies (2 pictures each)
Again, we will be shed testing the father when we are able. Just looking for the opinions of the experts.
Thank you in advance.
5 Likes
Looks like a lesser in the mix.
1 Like
Butter and lesser are the same gene. We definitely know he has that.
1 Like
Hahah, somehow I skimmed over butter entirely and just read chocolate mahogany. Sorry. I had my head in 3 different places and should not have been poking here. (Though there are currently some issues being looked into with RGI possibly finding a 3rd line of lesser/butter that is different as a heads up)
As far as the genetics on this one…
He looks too pale to me to have both mahogany and chocolate. Think of a mojave’s color to start and then it fades out to look like yours as a baby if that makes sense
Do you know what Dad’s pairing info was? That image is pretty blown out, but you can still see that the father was a richer tone after the changes occur over time. I don’t think it’s a polymorphic difference.
The downside is the expression on both mahogany and chocolate can vary so much in different animals. And sometimes a few can look similar as just a darker almost normal looking snake.
Genetic testing is probably your best bet for dad.
He looks more chocolate butter cinny to me than Blk pastel if that narrows it down for you.
2 Likes
What was the pairing that produced him?
1 Like
Just dipping my oar in the water. I’m betting there’s pastel in the batter based upon the lovely pale fading on those 8 balls. They look a lot like my own baby 8 w/pastel. But what do I know? 
This is all I’ve got to go by. I’ve tried to contact the breeder after the weird results of my breeding, but they won’t answer. I’m not mad…lol I just want to figure it out.
Yes, the mother is pastel cinnamon (possible fire), though I don’t think I’ve seen any fire.
This is really what makes it so hard, combined with different cameras and lighting, background color etc.
The 2 babies from this year we think are “just chocolate”, but they are so dark compared to the pictures I’m finding. It’s like those kid games when I was little where you have to figure out objects blindfolded. Lol
There’s so much variation in just a single morph, it definitely takes time and experience to get so many figured out.
1 Like
