By Harlin Wall
Producing and hatching a clutch of Green Tree Pythons is a magical blessing, when it all goes according to plan. All the blood, sweat and tears you have expended are finally rewarded! However, you are now also haunted with a somewhat daunting conundrum. Which animals should be selected as your future breeding stock. And which do you let go?
In a perfect scenario, it would be wisest to delay selling ANY of your neonates, allowing them at least a year or two of growth, before making your hold-back selections. This method has multiple benefits for the savvy breeder. Exercising this option will give you the ability to determine gender, which allows you to manage the sex ratio of your colony and fine tune the management of your future breeding plans. You gain a better idea of how each individual snake is developing in regard to their transition through ontogenesis. Over the years, witnessing a multitude of animals progressing through the color change helps to give you a bit of an edge for selecting the winners! Experience will teach you the most.
Keeping your neonates until they are raised to this age will also provide you with more information regarding each snake’s feeding habits and overall health. It takes the progeny past the delicate neonatal stages and onto the more established juvenile stages of life. Thus, providing you with a better selection of hold-backs, while at the same time, providing your customers with well started animals. You will know which snake is a good feeder, as well as which is a bit fussy and may require some finesse. Offering animals that you have more background information on will allow you to help your customer choose an animal that better suits their level of experience. This also allows you to provide customers with more informative health and behavioral histories for each individual snake. These are qualities that both you and your customers will appreciate.
A few thoughts about selling neonates…
Any neonates that are to be sold should, at the very minimum, have consistently taken no less than 10 meals (voluntarily) before they leave your care. Younger animals should go to more experienced keepers who understand the risks associated with purchasing young and potentially more delicate snakes. Neonates are not very forgiving of simple mistakes, often made by the novice keeper. Selling younger snakes to customers, who already possess a considerable amount of experience with this species, helps to provide a safety buffer for the animal’s well being…well as for your reputation! Selling younger animals to less experienced keepers will require that you be willing to offer some serious support. A worthwhile seller will generally also provide the customer with a health guarantee of a set length of time. These are rather minimal standards which we should expect of our community.
Having said this, life is not always a perfect scenario. You can’t keep ’em all! Sometimes (especially with larger numbers of hatchlings) you may need to sell a few well started neonates earlier than the “One Year” mark… just to keep your sanity! So, who do you keep?
When selecting hold-backs, I used just to pick those that really stood out from the crowd. They looked “special” as babies…so logic would say that they should become spectacular as adults too! (Throw logic out the window.)
Although I would certainly say that you should select the crazy looking babies, there is often more to the formula. Some things we can almost predict…and there will also be some unexpected surprises. Anything that is extreme should certainly be considered a hold-back. Ultra heavy patterns…as well as seriously reduced patterns. This applies to both red and yellow neonates. Many people concentrate on dorsal pattern and head-stamp pattern. This is fine…but don’t forget to check out the lateral patterning and the ventral patterning too. Sometimes you may notice unique tongue colors. This is a trait that can be a potential marker or clue to underlying genetic anomalies, often associated with color and pattern. Another characteristic that should be given consideration is eye color. Uniquely color eyes and/or pupils can provide clues about the potential for unexpected future results. I am talking about genetically inheritable traits. We see evidence of the same phenomenon in lots of other species of snakes. This logic can also be applied to Green Tree Pythons…(or any other species of snake for that matter).
Although there are no guarantees or assurances when it comes to selecting neonates that will mature to knock your socks off, the idea is to utilize every visual clue at your disposal, in order to give yourself the best odds of picking a winner or two.
The overall color of the snakes can be worthwhile to pay attention to when selecting hold-backs. When it comes to red neonates, often the darker colored babies and those that appear nearly patternless or almost black, are held in high regard for developing that “Eye Candy” appeal when they mature. Sometimes this holds true…and other times you end up with a very nice “plain green snake on a perch.” Chaotically patterned red or yellow neonates with a lot of static gibberish will often mature to impress!
Keep in mind that there can be a considerable amount of variation within a single clutch. Even when you are breeding amazing looking designers, with heavy pedigrees, it is still possible to produce some offspring that mature to look rather dull. This does not mean they don’t hold value. Some of the most impressive looking designers have been produced by breeders who understand the potential of pairing snakes which may appear “less than impressive” but possess a hidden treasure trove of genetics, which might only appeal to those who have studied a fair number of pedigrees.
When selecting from yellow neonates, we sometimes see “Blaze Phase” babies. Blaze phase neonates display a heavy maroon pattern that seems to have been airbrushed on. They can really look impressive. Or you may encounter “Rotten Bananas” These snakes look like they could not decide if they wanted to be red or yellow…as they display an almost paradox like pattern of both colors at the same time! While both of these neonate pattern/color types can look impressive, as a general rule, they have consistently matured to appear indistinguishable from normally colored and patterned siblings. Their neonate appearance does not usually seem to enhance or influence the way the animals look after ontogenesis.
Know When to Hold ‘Em, Know When to Fold ‘Em…
It is often said that Biak locality types take longer for their color change to complete, than do other localities. Sometimes as long as 5 years before the color and pattern stabilizes. Although I used to subscribe to this theory, my perspective has changed over the years. Regardless of locality type, some animals take longer than others to go through the initial change from red or yellow to the predominantly green color scheme associated with adults. This holds true for all the different locality types and also for designers (mixes of different localities). It even varies for sibling neonates! I say “initial color change” because, if you watch the color progression beyond this first shift from neonate color through to the adult stabilized colors, you will begin to notice that most individuals of ANY locality continue to change color hue and pattern intensity throughout the first five years of life. They all take a long time for their colors to finally stabilize. We just seem to notice it more with Biaks because of the stark differences between bright yellow and green. The changes in hues and intensity between blues and greens, or the slow development of a few additional white or black scales may not stand out as much or seem as noticeable.
Above: A yellow neonate from a Jayapura x Aru cross. Both the sire and the dam were also yellow as neonates. This animal was one of the standouts among all of it’s yellow siblings and was selected for the heavy handed patterning. To the right is the same animal as an adult with the pattern seen as a neonate transformed into the blue coloring. Most people associate blue with red neonates but you can also select for blue patterns and overall coloration when breeding animals that were yellow neos. This animal is a prime example of the potential for a selectively bred blue pattern project, originating from a yellow neonate pedigree. Photos courtesy of the breeder Richard R. Corcoran
I once selected a yellow neonate Jayapura with a very heavy maroon dorsal pattern. It had an unbroken stripe from the back of it’s head all the way to it’s tail…along with loads of maroon pattern on the lateral aspects of its body. I was sure that it would mature to display loads of killer blue, heavy with pattern and an eye grabbing stripe. It was a keeper! After the initial color change, at around one year of age, it assumed a very somber dark green color that nearly obscured any noticeable blue dorsal pattern. I was sadly disappointed. So, I decided to sell the animal. About four years later, I received a photo from the customer who purchased it. I was impressed with the snake in the photo! Initially, I did not realize it was the same animal I had sold her. As soon as the customer started to tell me that she had purchased it from me, I realized that I was learning a valuable lesson.
I had sold that Jayapura before it really started to display it’s full potential. It was still in the process of completing the secondary color and pattern stabilization phase of ontogenesis. This lesson has caused me to reconsider who gets sold…and who is kept as a future breeder. It has also earned me a bit of a reputation of being a hoarder! HA! As soon as you sell something you regret having let go…you too will have joined the ranks of the hoarders club! It is easy to sell something that you later wish you would have kept. This is a lesson that is taught to each keeper over time…it can be a tough lesson to learn! It is a lesson that the best among all reptile keepers must learn. I recall a conversation with my late friend, Rico Walder. He told me that a lady brought a Green Tree Python over to show him. He said that when he opened the container and peered in, the animal was absolutely stunning! He asked how much she wanted for the snake. She replied saying, “It’s not actually for sale”…To which he answered, “Everything can be for sale, if you agree on a price…what do you want for it?” She said, “I’d never feel good about selling you this animal.” And Rico said, “Seriously??? After all the nice deals I have worked with you over the years??? You would not consider giving me a shot at this snake?!?!” That is when she said, “Of course not, I just would not feel good about it, Rico. Mainly because I purchased it from you!” He was shocked! Soon enough, they were on his computer looking over the clutch photos of this snake and all it’s siblings. She looked at a few of the standout, “eye candy” examples and asked “What became of all of these?” He said, “Oh, I kept all of the really pretty ones…would you like to see how they all turned out?” Then he took her back to see a number of rather plainly colored green snakes coiled on their perches! You just never know! His selections paled in comparison to her prize! Rico said that this experience really changed the way he went about selecting his holdbacks. He said, “I like to pick some crazy cool looking animals…some rather common looking animals that don’t impress me much. And I like to pick a few that seem to be the average between the two extremes…just to hedge my bets!”
The bottom line…You will be holding more animals back to help insulate yourself from regrets.
Years later, after Rico had passed, I was on the phone with an accomplished breeder by the name of Mel Bernal. I started to tell her this tale of “Rico’s Selection Technique”…when she stopped me right in the middle… and then finished the story for me. She was the lady in the story! It was a heartfelt moment. A memory shared that I am sure is unforgettable for both of us.
If you look at enough photos of neonates and compare them with pics of the adults they grew to become…it can be surprising to see how they started out. Some of them may look rather common, and you would never have guessed that they would be “THE ONE!” Look at a neonate photo of Zeus. He was pretty as a neo…but not necessarily the one you may have guessed would turn out so amazing. Now, to play it from the other side of the fence…. Everything from that clutch did turn out pretty darn cool! It can be difficult to select which jewel will shine the brightest when surrounded by a treasure chest of jewels waiting to be polished! Raising your own neonates up provides illumination that a simple photo cannot. It fosters a connection with each individual animal, building a value that goes well beyond dollar signs. While it would be nearly impossible to include every tip and trick of selection in such a brief article, I have included a number of photos which I hope might help get your wheels turning. Putting in your time is the only way to gain firsthand experience. By the time you start feeling like you are beginning to get a little better at it…you may find yourself wishing you could travel back in time and start all over again. The beauty of our hobby is all about the journey, rather than any destination. You’ve got to put the time in…so just enjoy the process!
– More Examples Explained –
These photos document the progression of a male yellow neonate Sorong locality chondro from one year old until approximately 4 years old. This snake was selected for high yellow potential based on the reduced lateral pattern. Photos courtesy of the owner Connor Jones.
A red Jayapura neonate selected for its darker coloration now peppered with retained melanism. The lower lateral margins became bright yellow in this animal. Blue intensified as it aged and it maintained this overall appearance as an adult. Photo courtesy of Terry Phillips & Harlin Wall
This is a red Lereh locality neonate. This animal displayed a nearly purple, deep burgundy coloration along with nice bright white patterning. For an adult (non-designer) pure locality animal, this specimen exhibits an extreme amount of melanism. Photo courtesy of Harlin Wall, animal owned by Dan Trinka.
A very unusual color and pattern variant, note the abnormal eye coloration on this animal produced by Clyde Clause aptly named “Oddjob”. Photos courtesy of Clyde Clause
