|
Best 90 bucks I ever spent!!! Update October 2009 Well, 2009 has opened up a few new questions, and has shed some light on the iheritance within the project. We were able to get the original male pastel, Lustro, produced in Momma's first clutch back on breeding loan from Rich Afonso. It was great to see the little guy back and looking amazing! He still has that something special, just like one of his pastel sisters. He produced with Momma, and his pastel sister that does not have "The Look" that we were origianlly breeding for. Here are some pics of the hatchlings from Lustro X Momma. Down front is our gem for the year, a Goldfinger Pastel Luster!!! She is drop dead gorgeous, we couldn't have asked for a better clutch! Her sibs behind her really helped us figure out the genetics within the Goldfinger Project, it seems we really hit some good odds here!
We think that "The Look" we were breeding for is independently inherited and we have dubbed it "Luster" within our line. Lusters resemble the Desert trait that Pro exotics and a few others are working with, especially in pastel crosses. This was the origianl High Gold appearance we were breeding for, and we now believe that it is inherited independently of the Goldfinger trait. Meet Sahara!!
So if both Lustro and Momma are Lusters, does that mean that this very pretty pastel could be a super Luster pastel?! We have two of them too!!
Here is a pastel luster from clutch 2, no Goldfingers were produced by this female who does not have the Luster appearance.
Update July 2008 Here's a couple newer pics of the goldfinger project. They do shed clear, and we will be breeding this line into our hypo line this coming year. Originally we felt that the high gold color was a marker trait for this form of hypo, but we are looking at other possibilities. There is quite a difference between the visuals. The male looks much more like a typical hypo, while one of the females is much more washed out and bright.
Another comparison shot, this time with dad in the mix.
May, 2008 I can't believe it still, even after seeing them many times, but here's the story.....the whole story, with plenty of pics old and new. Back in '04 we picked up a very high gold yearling female here locally for $90 (not sure why I remember the price...). We were told she was CB, and they had her male sibling who also looked very gold. With no interest in adding another normal male to the collection, we passed on him. We named the female Goldfinger. In the 05/06 season she was bred to our lemon pastel Lemonardo, and we hatched some very nice looking animals. This was our very first clutch of morphs to hatch. The "Normal Female" in this pic ended up being male when I double checked sexes later, and we decided to hold him back for our first official dinkin' project. He just stood out from the rest of the normals in the clutch. We also held back two of the female pastels, and sold the rest of the clutch. In the 06/07 season, she was again bred to Lemonardo and again had some good looking babies. She once again produced a nice high gold female that we have held back, and we sold the rest of the clutch. She did however retain an egg last year, and after trying many other options, we dropped the money to have it surgically removed to ensure her health and reproductive future. She bounced back very quickly after the surgery, and was back up to her breeding weight in just a few months. We felt comfortable breeding her again last season, and with enough morph projects going on, I decided to give her son a go with her. This has always been my little pet project, and although I dreamt of seeing something special hatch, I really only had expectations of getting some nice high gold normals. Well she laid on 3-12
I started yelling and jumping around, I just couldn't believe what I was seeing!!! My blood was pumping as if I had just run a mile, and I had to tell some one!!!! I woke my wife up, and she was happy for me, but expectantly somewhat perturbed that it couldn't have waited until morning :oops:. I was all alone in my excitement for the rest of the night, 'cause I sure didn't sleep much. (I spent the next few hours going back down for some sneak peaks to pass the time :D) Over the next week or so, and after cutting larger windows in the eggs, I took a million pictures as they began to emerge from the egg (with maybe 10 good ones...:oops: ). Every time I opened that incubator, I thought they must have changed back into normals by now somehow, things like this just don't happen to me.........nope! Still awesome!!! We ended up with 1.2 visual homozygous and I couldn't be happier!!! Now, we aren't exactly sure what we are dealing with. I thought there was going to be one obvious high gold post shed, but all the sibs seem really dark to me, darker than her normal offspring usually are. They also seemed very caramel-like right out of the egg, but seem to resemble hypos much more post-shed, though two of them seem much more gold than typical hypos. The head pattern on those two are dramatically reduced as well, and I'm not sure if it is linked to this trait or not. I am however very excited to see these guys in a few months!!! Technically, we can't even be sure yet that the gold color in the parents has anything to do with this trait, or if it is completely independent, only time will tell.
|
