My first butter ball python =)

I bought her from Dwayne Bulat of Desert Dweller Reptiles. Here are the pics he shared with me.








She was shipped overnight from Arizona to Tennessee and arrived on my doorstep at 8:30 this morning.








She's a tiny little thing and she nipped me after I got these pics. lol I'm going to give her some time to get settled in. I won't bother her for a few days at least and then I'll offer her some food.

Sandy, she is GORGEOUS!!!!

Thanks! She's settling in well and hasn't tried to nip me since that first day. I refill her water dish and she doesn't get upset. I'm going to get new pics of her sometime soon. I think I'll take her outside so I can try to capture her colors better. She's such a cute baby.

I can see the corner of the butter in one of the pics lol. It seems to be gorgeous from what I can see. I am on my parents dial up and loading pics is a terrible hardship.

The Anti-Poon wrote:

I can see the corner of the butter in one of the pics lol. It seems to be gorgeous from what I can see. I am on my parents dial up and loading pics is a terrible hardship.

Oh dial up sucks, but it's good to hear from you Devin! Thanks for the compliments!

Since I was checking in on snakes tonight, I figured I'd snap a new pic of the baby.



She still needs a name but I can't decide on one.

Very pretty. That pic shows the warm colors well.

I offered her a small mouse this afternoon and she was interested enough to track it but wanted nothing to do with it. I'm going to get some weanling rats for my corns from Shane next week so I'll pick up a rat pink or two for her.

She finally ate her first meal with me -- rat pinks. [Thanks again, Shane!!]

It is nice to not be on dial up an more, she is gorgeous. What a sad first meal for a bp though....a pinky :-( lol

The Anti-Poon wrote:

It is nice to not be on dial up an more, she is gorgeous. What a sad first meal for a bp though....a pinky :-( lol

Yeah, but they're RAT pinks and she ate not one but three of them. I'm pretty confident that she can handle a rat pup so that's what I'll offer at her next feeding.

good good don't want no little snakey being hungry :-P

Beautiful little girl! We definitely need to compare her with my lesser as they age and so on to see how each one's colors change as they age. I've been told that the butters seem to retain a bit more of the color, whereas lessers just lighten the older they get. Richer colors and more contrast on the butters too. Love that blackback girl! If I ever get my blackback male, we should definitely breed them and see what happens!

PythonPassion wrote:

Beautiful little girl! We definitely need to compare her with my lesser as they age and so on to see how each one's colors change as they age. I've been told that the butters seem to retain a bit more of the color, whereas lessers just lighten the older they get. Richer colors and more contrast on the butters too. Love that blackback girl! If I ever get my blackback male, we should definitely breed them and see what happens!

Definitely!

You know, I used to think the butters and lessers were entirely different but now after reading some of the history on them, I'm not so sure. It seems that they're both basically the same but are two lines of selectively bred stock. Whether they are or not, I think our animals are gorgeous and can't wait to see them all grown up!

Yeah, it seems like I have read something about them like that too. Some were bred for the darker, richer colors, and some for the lighter ones. But the butter X lesser cross (at least according to most) seems to produce the cleanest BELs (which was one of my reasons for wanting one of each--I also wanted to see them both grow and compare colors, too). In any case, they are fromt eh same line, but have been bred to highlight certain things in their respective lines. Each have their own quirks that make them beautiful.

Sounds kinda like the pastels, there are basically two lines of them, the orange pastel and the yellow pastel.

The Anti-Poon wrote:

Sounds kinda like the pastels, there are basically two lines of them, the orange pastel and the yellow pastel.

The story I read was that Ralph Davis imported an animal he dubbed the "Platty Daddy". He proved it out but the babies weren't as light as the original platinum, hence the "lesser" portion of their name. Around the same time, Mike and Kim Bell proved out an imported animal and dubbed it the butter ball python. Everything I've read suggests that these are basically the same animal, but there are variances in color after years of selective breeding so they do look different.

How do you prove an animal out? Keep breeding it to its offspring? : P

Dagan wrote:

How do you prove an animal out? Keep breeding it to its offspring? : P

Breeding trials. Say you buy a snake that is listed as 50% possible heterozygous for albino. There is a 50/50 chance that this the snake carries the gene for albino. There is no way of knowing without breeding it to a 100% het albino or a visual albino. If there are albinos in the clutch, you have proven the possible het as a real (100%) het albino. If that snake is bred to the same 100% het or visual albino and continually produces clutches with no albinos, it may be a safe bet that it is not a het and you rule out the possibility of it being het.

Ah, very interesting. For some reason I thought 50% het meant that only half of its babies would have the desired trait...hah. Good thing I haven't been buying snakes lately, based on such assumptions!

Dagan wrote:

Ah, very interesting. For some reason I thought 50% het meant that only half of its babies would have the desired trait...hah. Good thing I haven't been buying snakes lately, based on such assumptions!

Yeah. The percentage given is just quantifying the CHANCE that the animal is het for a recessive trait.

100% het - one of the parents is a visual recessive morph
50% het - one parent is a 100% het and the other is normal
66% het - both of the parents are 100% het animals (50% of the offspring are heterozygous, 25% will be homozygous, and 25% will be normals)

I hope I didn't botch that.

QuietTempest wrote:

Dagan wrote:

Ah, very interesting. For some reason I thought 50% het meant that only half of its babies would have the desired trait...hah. Good thing I haven't been buying snakes lately, based on such assumptions!

Yeah. The percentage given is just quantifying the CHANCE that the animal is het for a recessive trait.

100% het - one of the parents is a visual recessive morph
50% het - one parent is a 100% het and the other is normal
66% het - both of the parents are 100% het animals (50% of the offspring are heterozygous, 25% will be homozygous, and 25% will be normals)

I hope I didn't botch that.

Nope, you're correct.

Got new pics of my baby.

She's been wolfing down rat pups and getting bigger!!



(with flash)



(without flash in our reptile room)

yeah no need for flash lol to say the least that is a huge difference

Well, without flash the lighting from the JCP cage is causing the yellows on her to distort.