Pied Garters.. Has anyone seen this?

[d_virginiana]

I like the first one, but I wouldn't even want the second one... My guess is that the price will probably start going down in a couple years. I imagine anyone who has one will be breeding it. I do worry about inbreeding like you mentioned though; with such valuable babies I bet there will be some people who just breed siblings and parents back to each other again and again to get whiter pieds. Even worse because this trait seems to go back to only one or two snakes (which was it?).

[ConcinusMan]

It's not really a problem even if it started with only one snake, IF you outcross with totally unrelated snakes every few generations. The thing is, with prices like that, especially if they're falling, people won't do that. They'll take the shortest route.

[Greg'sGarters]

The picture you posted up I forgot about. Lol. That looks to me like a reverse paradox more than a piebald. Yeah selling that as a piebald is like crossing 2 snakes missing a few scales here and there, and selling them as scaleless.

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

The picture you posted up I forgot about. Lol. That looks to me like a reverse paradox more than a piebald. Yeah selling that as a piebald is like crossing 2 snakes missing a few scales here and there, and selling them as scaleless.

Actually it could be as simple as this snake ingested something toxic and shed off color in some of it's scales. This has been seen in boas and some other species already. Boa gets a bad rat and BOOM, sheds off half it's color in one shed! I wouldn't call that one a pied either. pied animals should have at least a "patch" of white somewhere, and I haven't seen any true pied animal of any species where the remaining pattern on the snake was normal. If this DID prove out to be a morph of any kind, which I seriously doubt... it would fit better into the "calico" description... at least that is what most of those white flecked things are called these days. There are other reasons besides genetics which cause scales to lose all color... and given how small the areas are on that one, I would just be surprised to see it genetic. Not impossible, just improbable.

[annulataarethebest]

Supply and demand, Scott will be the only one with the piebalds available, therefore he gets to pick the price. I assume pieds that have only a couple patches of white here and there will be the cheaper ones, and the $5,000 price is reserved for the more white animals, and I could see them selling easily for those amounts... The first round of people who buy these snakes will most likely be other snake breeders who will be looking to reproduce the morph, so they'll just look at it as an investment that will take a couple years to pay off. But it would. If you put $1,000 into a piebald, or actually, let's say Scott hooked you up with a pied and a het pied for 1500, in 2-3 years you'll be producing 10-30 babies (at least) per year, with half being piebald, probably some more than others. Even if the price drops to 500 within that 3 years you'll still easily make your money back. Then after that the money is going to come from crossing other morphs into the piebald (i.e. piebald albino, piebald flame maybe??) to create some more designer garter snake morphs like the "Snow" eastern.
I also don't think inbreeding is as much of a problem with captive reproduction of morphs, of course you're going to have to breed siblings/relatives back to each other to establish a new morph, but it's going to take more than those first couple generations for any defects from inbreeding pop up. And most breeders will make sure to outcross animals anyhow.

[Tora]

so how do the pieds look now? or did Scott give up on them?

[Albert Clark]

so how do the pieds look now? or did Scott give up on them?

Pieds are looking very good now. If you go to Scotts web page there is a pic of one there. Also Jeff Benfer has a pic of a pied garter on his web page "Garter snake morph". I don't think either one of them is giving up on the pied project any time soon. They are pricey right now. Welcome to the club! I'm new here also. Lol

[Jeff B]

Albert, there have been a couple litters produced with no pieds, so most have all but given up. It's a major bummer since that is one gene that really gets people excited, including myself. I gave up on producing pieds myself when my last poss het female died on me shortly after getting a substantial sized group of the alleged het pied babies. However, I still have two males in my possession, but I did not breed them to anything this year. Not sure why I still have them, other than a tiny bit of hope that Ed will still prove them out. Also, I should apologize, I have not updated my website in two years. One of these days I will have some free time to do that.

[Eddie]

Pieds would be killer though!!

[Albert Clark]

Wow, o.k. I thought the project was still going on. Thanks for the bulletin. Lol. Nice to know.