The Citrus Tiger is a line of tiger carpets that traces to Jason Baylin’s original line of tiger carpets. It was a pairing between an HCQ Tiger and an undocumented coastal carpet. Anthony Cappenetto picked up a tiger carpet from Jason in 2002. If you have ever visited AC Reptile’s website, then you have seen this snake. It has to be one of the nicest tigers that I have seen to date.
He paired this with a High contrast Queensland (HCQ) that came direct from Dave Prada. This pairing produced some insanely bright yellow Tigers. Will Bird picked up a male from Anthony and wanted to continue to make brighter yellow Tigers. His male HCQ was the sire of the citrus tiger line.
The dam of the line was a snake that Brain Taylor, a.k.a. BT of Reptile Radio had picked up from Jane McPherson. She was sold to him as a reduced pattern jungle carpet. Jane sold the snake to Brian labeled as a reduced pattern jungle carpet python, but when Brian put pictures of her online, a lot of people told him that she was indeed a coastal carpet and not a jungle carpet. Brian was a purist and only worked with pure lines of jungle carpets, so he sold this snake to Will Bird. Will figured she would make an excellent addition to his HCQ tiger project. Dam of the CT line. Photo by Brian Taylor
Will produced his first clutch and noticed that they had an orange type of color tone to them. So he called them Citrus Tigers. Will isn’t working with the line anymore, and only a handful of people are. There is a ton of potential with this line, but there is an issue with the undocumented female in the lineage for some. I would never label them as “pure” coastal carpet pythons because of the question marks in the line, but it still doesn’t change the fact that these snakes are stunning. To date, I have bred them into Albinos, Caramel zebra jags, Caramels, and granites. This is my main female that has produced all of my Citrus Tiger clutches. Photo by Eric Burke
