Finally we have those animals which everyone has in their collection, the ones that don’t fit into a current breeding plan but which we can’t bear to part with. For us, this means George the Mojave my very first snake. We have no breeding plans for him but I’d like to give him his chance some day!
ULTRAMEL PROJECTS
We also have some other non-Ultramel morphs as part of the Ultramel project, such as our fantastic Lesser Leopard from Dan Parker. These represent the future of the Ultramel gene at Ophidian Select and we are using these non-Ultramel morphs to make our own, novel Het Ultramels and eventually even more exciting multi gene Ultramel combinations.
Hypomelanism PROJECTS
The Hypomelanism project stemmed from the chance find of a very nice Hypo Cinnamon at a reptile show, bred by Pi Reptiles. However, she was not part of our own breeding plans and stayed with Pi Reptiles. At the next reptile show there she was again, and by midday temptation had got the better of me and our Hypomelanism project was started. We added a Hypo Mojave from John Berry shortly afterwards with the intention of producing Hypo Savannahs and eventually Hypo Super Cinnamons and Mojave’s. Unlucky odds and the Lure of Ultramel have seen this project stall but we will hopefully be resuming this with and Ultramel twist!
The major thrust of our interest here at Ophidian Select is the Ultramel Gene, which forms the core of our Royal Python collection. Our original Ultramel female came from the first UK bred Ultramel clutch at Regal Pythons. To this we paired a Pin Het Ultramel imported by John Berry and produced our first Ultramel Combo, an UltraPin (missing out on a world first by 12 months). We have subsequently added a variety of other Het Ultramels, some bought it as well as some bred by us, which we’re hoping to use to make some exciting new visual Ultramel combinations.
Ultraglow PROJECTS
Ophidian
The UltraGlow (Hypomelanism and Ultramel) project came from a chance pairing of our Hypo Cinnamon to our Ultramel Pinstripe. It was a planned pairing, but owed more to the Ultramel Pinstripe trying to breed with everything than a long term goal to produce UltraGlows. Our Hypo Cinnamon had follicles at the time, so we tried the pairing and the resulting Het UltraGlows included some very pretty, striped Cinnamon Pinstripes, including one unusually dark example with a highly broken / blurred pattern. After picking out a few holdbacks (including the unusually Cinnamon Pinstripe), we’ve embarked on the low odds ratio path of producing double recessive UltraGlows. Watch this space for future UltraGlows with the added bounce of Cinnamon, Super Cinnamon and Pinstripe thrown in as well as a follow up to genetic behind the unusually Cinnamon Pinstripe.
SELECT
OTHER ROYAL PYTHONS