Sunset Blizzard update

[nicks]

It has been a while since I posted the first pic of the sunset blizzard and wanted to give an update on the project. When I origanally posted pics of the juvenile there were request for adult pics, so if you check out the link http://www.vmsherp.com/ViewLeopards.htm you will find adult pics. There are also pics of the sunrise blazing blizzard. Before the question is asked, "why is that on somebody else's site?" The answer is that this summer I made the very difficult decision to step away from the herp world for a while, but for good reason. I began law school in August and my family and I moved from Colorado to North Carolina. It has been a huge change and I miss my animals very much but I left them with great people! My gecko projects were split between two great and very experienced breeders, Sean (and Monica) Niland of http://www.vmsherp.com and Pat Kline of http://www.luxuriousleopards.com.

With finals beginning next week, I won't be checking back here very often so if you have specific questions it would be best to email me directly at [email protected]

 

[kkigs]

Ah ha! Finally, I've been waiting for Sean to post those, he teased me about an "amazing new morph" that he had... Congrats on getting them to take, sounds like you put in a lot of effort.

Thanks for posting!

 

[snared99]

.

 

[PhoenixCoconut]

Amazing!

 

[Baoh]

Nice yellow Blizzards and yellow Tremper Blizzards.

 

[kkigs]

Yeah, those "yellow blizzards" are a dime a dozen. Or not.

 

[LZRDGRL]

Those are some beautiful animals, and I hope you get some of their offspring back when you finish law school, so you can continue your work with fresh stock :main_yes: Good luck with your finals next week! I'll be grading finals next week :main_laugh:

Chrissy

 

[nicks]

So now that you can see some better pictures of the Sunset and Sunrise I’ll try to give as much background on this project as I can. My original hypothesis was that if I bred a Tangelo to a Midnight Blizzard and then bred their offspring together I could get the orange of the Tangelo to fill in where the dark pigment was in the Midnight Blizzard. While they haven’t turned out orange it appears as though the results are close to what I had set out to do. I will give breeding history chronologically, hopefully that makes it easier to follow.

2006 I bought a male Tangelo from Ron Tremper.

2007 I bred the Tangelo to a group of Midnight Blizzards(4) all of the offspring expressed the “normal” phenotype.

2008 I bred F1 x F1 offspring from the above group; it produced a very wide range of offspring, normal, Blizzard, Blazing Blizzard, Tangerine, Tangelo, and the first male Sunset. Keep in mind that out of 180 offspring produced by the two F1 groups I only produced the 1 male Sunset.

2009 I had hoped to breed the male Sunset back to the F1 females that however did not happen; instead as soon as I introduced a female to him he everted his hemipenes. This would come to be how he responded to every female and it was clear quite quickly that he was not going to breed. Without the Sunset I had to repeat the breeding from the year before and do F1 x F1. This time around the results were similar but I produced two females, one Sunrise and one Sunset, but no males.

2010 I bred one of the F1 males to the two females produced the year before. In this breeding my odds got much better (two out of twenty nine), I produced a male Sunrise and one more female Sunset.

2011 This year I bred the male Sunrise to the female Sunsets and the one Sunrise I had produced. Because the male and females in 2010 were late hatchlings they didn’t start breeding until later this season but we produced all Sunsets or Sunrises from this group, a mix of sixteen Sunrises and Sunsets. This coming year we have a small group of Sunrises and a small group of Sunsets that we will be breeding. At this time we do have a few surplus males that we will be releasing (incubated to be female but turned out to be male.)

If you are interested in getting into this project let me know.

I’ll throw it out there now that I also started down the path to producing Patternless Tangelo’s, Pat has that project. I also produced a few eclipse eyed Tangelo’s this season and will be working that into the above projects at some point soon. We also hope to find out if the Paradox albino was genetic by breeding him to his female offspring from last year.

 

[eyelids]

As a Bell only 'breeder' it is great to know that you have Sunsets that may no be het Tremper... Blizzards and Bells are my favorite morphs... With each new morph [Mack Snow & Enigma] to come out I was excited to see what the Blizzard cross would be like... Well it's been somewhat of a let down in my opinion as these crosses haven't really added much to the base [Blizzard] morph... Yes a really nice MS Blizzard is gorgeous, but it's still a solid grey gecko...

Now you produce the Sunset! At first I felt like many others, 'yeah nice high yellow Blizzard', but after seeing adult photos I am blown away... For my taste in Leos, this is the most exciting morph to come out!

I also just noticed the potential of the Eclipse Blizzard cross that had been hidden by the albino gene all this time... They can express the 'white leg' trait from the Eclipse morph which would suggest the 'white nose and head' traits should be able to be expressed as well...

Then there is the unproven[?] W/Y Blizzard which is just crazy looking as a hatchling... I believe the pic is here somewhere although it may be at the other gecko forum... Would love an update if any European members know anything about it!

Point being is that your Sunset [and Sunrise] have shown a new light upon Blizzard fanatics! With the other morphs I mentioned there are going to be some amazing geckos made over the next several years! So glad that you took the time to see your project through!

I'm shooting for MS BBB het Eclipse and MS W/Y Radar possible het Blizzard next year... Also looking to see if Reverse Stripe can do anything to the Blizzard morph, but am not holding my breath... :main_laugh: I hope Pat will have some Sunset het Radar available in 2013/2014...

 

[stager]

Nice work

 

[nicks]

Michael, Thank you! I'll be the first to admit that my pictures are seldom good, my Fuji camera just doesn't cut it. When you see them in person I think you will like them even more. We should definitely have non het tremper sunsets available this year as well as non het tremper tangerines that originate from the tangelo.

On that note I'd like to clarify one thing from my post above; the vast majority of the offsrping from the F1 x F1 breeding were normals, albinos, blizzards. There were also some blazing blizzards and just a few tangelos and tangerines, of the last two types combined there were less than ten produced each year.

Thank you Chrissy, I am definitely looking forward to the summer of 2014 when I graduate and get to return to breeding. I'm not sure if I'd rather be taking or grading finals!

 

[KelliH]

They are very pretty!