Tokay Morphs...

danniel

New member
So, here is my Pied Male. He has spent the summer with this progressive pied girl. All of their prodigy look normal at this point but I expect to see changes on some of these six months from now.

As a bonus, both of these have marbled eyes as well.

beautiful tokay...
a female look like calico...
 

ciliatus

New member
Michael, i got to say i totally envy you for all your spectacular animals. You do a great job. Unfortunately it is pretty hard to get tokay morphs in Europe. There is "Green Eyed Gecko" the board member who breeds a few, but otherwise i have seen almost none available.

I have 1,1 Calicos (progressive pied as you say) but i am pretty sure they are not the same kind of Calico. The female is wild caught. I found the male at a reptile show in Austria and was told it was captive bred and looked like that from the start. Last week i had the first offspring of this pair looking quite normal.

Male:
calicomale04.jpg

calicomale05.jpg

calicomale07.jpg

calicomale09.jpg


Female:
calicofemale01.jpg

calicofemale02.jpg

calicofemale03.jpg


Offspring:
calicobaby01.jpg

calicobaby02.jpg

calicobaby03.jpg


I also have a young male from "Green Eyed Gecko" that comes from a Calico X Calico pairing.

This is when he was younger:
tokaymale2_01.jpg

tokaymale2_02.jpg


This is what he looks like now, not sure if he is normal or starts to change now with 18 months:
tokaymale2_03.jpg

tokaymale2_04.jpg

tokaymale2_05.jpg


Interested in your opinions. ;)

Greets

Ingo
 

billewicz

New member
Nice Tokay,

If you look at the remaining patches on the 'calico' male, you can easily see the remaining normal pattern still there. This is typical of a high white pied animal.

The female is typical of a low white pied, or a young animal that is just starting to turn.

If they were genetically compatible, then you have a chance that some of those normal looking offspring will turn as well. This is the nature of the progressive trait.

Good luck and enjoy!
 

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ciliatus

New member
Hi Michael,

thx. But i am a little confused, to me Pied is something that occurs from birth and also has normal pattern on the normal colored places, like piebald ball pythons. And Calico also have normal pattern but start to lose color over time. Thats why i dont understand that you would rather call them piebald.

I got the wc female in September 2011 and i just looked at an old pic and it seems she gains more color and loses white unfortunately.

calicofemale04.jpg


What do you think about the young (about 18 months) Calico x Calico male? On the newer pics its seems to me, that his colors start to fade. What would you say?

Greets

Ingo
 

Riverside Reptiles

Administrator (HMFIC)
As David Tracer has noted (and posted pics of), many of these tokays can change over their entire lifespan, not just when they are young. There are many secrets yet to unlock before we know really what we're dealing with for a lot of these morphs.
 

billewicz

New member
Hi Michael,

thx. But i am a little confused, to me Pied is something that occurs from birth and also has normal pattern on the normal colored places, like piebald ball pythons. And Calico also have normal pattern but start to lose color over time. Thats why i dont understand that you would rather call them piebald.

I got the wc female in September 2011 and i just looked at an old pic and it seems she gains more color and loses white unfortunately.

calicofemale04.jpg


What do you think about the young (about 18 months) Calico x Calico male? On the newer pics its seems to me, that his colors start to fade. What would you say?

Greets

Ingo

First off, most of the Tokay 'morph' names where given to wild caught animals and never proved out in a domestic breeding program.

Calico falls hard in this category. No one has proven out what makes a 'calico' Tokay or even defined it. This goes for leucistic as well. Yes there are black eyed, white animals 'called' leucistic but breeding these Tokay together does not produce visuals either. You may have noticed that a lot of these white Tokay have hazel eyes and some sort of pattern in the patches. All of this is a far cry from a true blue eyed all white animal.

Typically, pied is simple recessive. If that's true here, then paired visuals should produce visuals. Of the 12 pairs of white Tokay that I've worked with so far, none of them has produced visuals at birth.

Then two things happened. A breeder here that works with patternless powder blues that are het for 'calico/leucistic' had one of her juveniles start to turn at about 5 months. I too had one in four offspring from my avatar girl also start to turn at about 8 months. (Both animals are documented in the morph thread of this forum.)

This led me to do some digging. And low and behold, I learned several things. First, there are several genetic pathways or genetic combinations that can produce similar looking morphs and second, that pied can be progressive in some animals including reptiles.

This description of the white starting to appear, and creep in during the maturing phase of the animals growth is very much in line with what we have seen so far. We have also seen the speckled 'calico' continue to change to a darker phase. I have a couple of wild caught that were sold to me as melanistic, but they have the white rings around their eyes and some yellow specs. i.e., they've completely turned almost fully black/gray.

The short version is that we are still several years away from proving out the genetics of Tokay beyond just naming wild caught animals. I have several, like the avatar girl, that have what appears to be three visual genes at work. I've only started to sort out two of them with her. The progressive pied being one of them.
 
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Riverside Reptiles

Administrator (HMFIC)
I'm still waiting to see if anyone else has produced any captive bred granites. My captive bred granite female comes from a calico x calico breeding not from granite x granite. She hatched as a normal and the change came around a year or so later. Other than that, I've never heard of anyone producing a granite straight from the egg or producing cb granites at all. Yet another mystery involving the "calico" morph it seems.
 

billewicz

New member
I'm still waiting to see if anyone else has produced any captive bred granites. My captive bred granite female comes from a calico x calico breeding not from granite x granite. She hatched as a normal and the change came around a year or so later. Other than that, I've never heard of anyone producing a granite straight from the egg or producing cb granites at all. Yet another mystery involving the "calico" morph it seems.

Yeah, I'm holding all my offspring from several pairs of Granite x Granite. They all look normal now. I want to see if any of them change over time.
_____________________

And then there is the Gray Granite, the Blue Granite, and the granite with yellow feet and knees, or just yellow specs or patches.
 
Where to aquire?

Hey there, I was wondering if you guys/gals have any good sites I could get some good morphs from to start off my breeding. I've never seen any wild types like those above, or tsunamis for sale in my area. Thanks!
 

billewicz

New member
So it's that time of year again.
:yahoo:Tokay Breeding Season.:banana:

:biggrin:I'm most excited to see if we get any visuals later this year from this Pied pair.:biggrin:

First three photos are the male and the rest are the new female.

Michael's Tokay Hoard, @ www.billewicz.com
 

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billewicz

New member
So Michael, how many skin grafts did you need after that pied photo shoot?

Very funny but I rarely get bit. The defensive pose with the mouth a gape is usually the first thing they do after they have stopped running around.

You can stroke their backs and they will just sit there. Males tend to hunch their backs up as well and I don't find that an appealing look to photograph.

They will eventually settle completely down and relax but I don't often take the time to wait them out. So, I just run my finger above their head and they open wide and pose. So much more Tokay like. :fight::evil::fight:
 

Marauderhex

New member
I find that mine actually prefers to be initially stroked on the nose, from the front. This way he can see that something is going to be touching him. If I go straight for the back, he becomes defensive and skittish.
 

billewicz

New member
I find that mine actually prefers to be initially stroked on the nose, from the front. This way he can see that something is going to be touching him. If I go straight for the back, he becomes defensive and skittish.

I've heard others have some luck with this approach. I have over 300 Tokay and it does not work on all of them.

Some of my big males would simple shorten my fingers.:rofl:
 

billewicz

New member
Super Red F-1 M#1 (98)_3DS4158LR.jpgSuper Red F-1 M#1 (98)_3DS4184LR.jpg

So here is one of my F-1 Super Red males from 2011. ( I got 7 of them the first season.)

Usually they are a brick red with red dots and some turquoise dots with a red powder sheen, but when you pull them out for photos they can go to their 'dark mode'. :evil:

Here he is in 'dark mode', enjoy.
 

Riverside Reptiles

Administrator (HMFIC)
So are the reds producing like true simple recessive genetics should?
(ie red x red = 100% red babies)?
Or is it another one of the weird tokay genetics that only produces a small percentage of visual offspring?
 

billewicz

New member
So are the reds producing like true simple recessive genetics should?
(ie red x red = 100% red babies)?
Or is it another one of the weird tokay genetics that only produces a small percentage of visual offspring?
Yes, simple recessive, I think. I say that because I'm pretty sure the original pair were related which is partly why I was willing to spend the big bucks on them. They were collected from exactly the same place, at the same time.

The other hesitation comes from the fact that I've had a couple pop as normal looking too. One from the first year and one from last year. So I'll have to raise these guys up and breed them to see if they are het or not.

I've got a second unrelated female that came in last year that I've just now paired with one of the F-1 visual males to see if they throw visuals as well. That outcome will provide a better answer to your/our question of genetics.
 

Riverside Reptiles

Administrator (HMFIC)
Well, if you've had normals pop up from a red x red pairing, then it's not truly simple recessive. If it were truly simple recessive, they'd be 100% red offspring. It's interesting as a lot of the tokay morphs seem to be that way. They're "almost" simple recessive. It'll be very interesting to see if the normals turn out to be hets. Or, if it turns out like more of a co-dom gene where the normals are all just normals and there no hets.
 
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