I always thought it was a morph!! LOL. But that was a nice read and I know what it is now I would adopt one!

 

Interesting read! Thanks for sharing! :no1:

 

Hi Wilko... congratulations on a very informative website...

I personally would prefer to know that there is no stargazing gene in any snakes I may produce, but am aware that this may take some while to prove out. It's good to know that some breeders are concerned enough about this to take an ethical stance, but I am very much afraid that unless everyone takes this stance it is highly unlikely that we will ever be able to fully breed out this trait....

Issue of cost vs. demand for different morphs that stem from the Okeetee line and I'm afraid to say that all too often the market for different morphs may well take precedence for many people.

 

Thank you

I hope that if enough people know about stargazing, and it's out in the open then people will take that ethical stance. And if it's all about money with some of the larger breeders - maybe they'll realise that if they could breed out stargazing and guarantee that their lines are free of stargazing genes, they could charge a premium for their snakes. Plus get a good reputation for bothering to get rid of stargazing. Though I'm sure some breeders would still try and just cover up any stargazing in their lines.
In the meantime, I'm trying to at least educate hobbyists and new cornsnake owners about the gene so that they are at least aware of it

 

That was a fascinating, if depressing, read. Thanks for posting

 

the jaguar carpet python morph and the spider royal morph have the same neurological issues resulting in anything from head wobbles,star gazing to full on corkscrewing.

anyone trying to figure it out and rectify the situation can only be good imo

cheers shaun

 

From what I understand, with Jaguars and Spiders, the neurological problems are not straightforwardly passed down from parents to offspring - severely wobbly parents can produce non-wobbly offspring and vice versa and everything inbetween. This makes it a lot more difficult to predict/breed out. Plus, for the Spider, it is such a popular morph, and when bred with other morphs the offspring don't show a wobble (I think, I could be wrong - not too good on royal morphs).

I'm just trying to spread the word, other people have done the hard work of discovering that Stargazing is a recessive gene

 

I'm not sure that Adam has seen this thread yet, but in his abscence I will make a few comments on stargazing.

We are working closely with a breeder in Holland who was unfortunate enough to get homozygous gazers produced this year, in exactly the way Natrix in his first post. We have F1 offspring from the original sire of this F2 generation, who are obviously now 50% poss het stargazer. Before this even cropped up, we were looking into importing gazers or het gazers from Connie Hurley in the US for testing purposes. Now it is more important than ever that we test our lines.

We plan to test every homozygous, heterozygous or poss het sunkissed snake in our collection before selling any snakes with this gene. Yes, this is only the start as by now the gene could be in any morph, but we have to start somewhere. And yes, this does involve culling entire clutches at hatch. It is not something I am looking forward to doing, but it must be done and we have the advantage over many people that I can perform this humanely. (This fact was one of the original stipulations put by Connie when we originally looked at importing these snakes).

The exception to the euthanasia is the homozygous gazers that we produce. These will be kept and raised to be used to test breed. Again this is something that I am not looking forward to, as we currently have 5 gazers given to us by our Dutch friend to raise, and it is quite disturbing to watch.

We will also keep any proved het animals for testing purposes.

Now obviously we will initially be using these animals for our own collection (we regard procorns in the UK and specialcorns in the Netherlands as one collection for this purpose as our animals are very interlinked). But in the future we will also be helping other people to test their animals. An important point to us is that ANY snake intended for testing breeding will be GIVEN AWAY or LOANED to those people who want them. WE WILL NOT SUPPORT A TRADE IN STARGAZER CORNS. We will also be in very close contact with anyone receiving one of these animals to ensure that these animals do not "vanish" into the general cornsnake population to spread the gene around agian.

There is already a waiting list of people who want to be involved in this project, and with the currently very limited stock we have for testing, it will take some time. We currently are looking to prioritise which snakes we test next year to clear (or not) as many F1 snakes as possible, as the proven het male has several years of breeding already under his belt.

I have 2 separate additional things that I personally wish to get out of this whole sorry mess. Firstly, given my profession, I want to support Connie in her research as to the exact mechanism of the disease inany way possible. Any gazers that die or cannot be used to breed will be sent to a specialist for full post mortem and detailed sampling.
Secondly I would like (and I'm not sure how the other people in the program will feel about this) to produce as soon as possible, a clutch of tested clean homozygous sunkissed corns that can again be given away to any breeders who wish to start sunkissed projects. I realise that we cannot ever say "100% this snake is not a carrier for stargazing", but we can get to 99%.

We do not do this for profit, or good name or any reason other than we love our snakes. Watching the stargazers is horrible. Some people may think it is cute that one of them sleeps all curled up in the normal way, but upside down. I do not. I do not believe the snake is suffering as it is obviously completely unaware it is doing something unusual. But that does not make it right.

We do not own any royal pythons, or any leos, so I am unable to comment on the neurological issues in those species.

I am sorry for the length of the post, but this is a subject about which my hisband and I are very passionate about.

 

Vetdebbie, :notworthy::notworthy::notworthy::notworthy::notworthy::notworthy:.

Thank you for what you are undertaking to do on behalf of those poor snakes.

Mo. :notworthy:

 

I forgot to add - if any one is interested in what we are doing, please PM either myself or adsclarke. We can also direct you to other information on other forums.

 

Debbie , this is one of the reasons that I buy snakes from Adam . To anyone who doesn't know Debbie and her hubby Ads I can honestly say that their mutual shared passion for animals ( not just snakes ) shines through , this is reflected not just in the quality of the animals they produce , but the superb conditions that they are bred and raised in . To talk to Ads one can tell his passion and enthusiasm , Adam's hatchlings really are his babies / pride and joy . He probably won't thank me for this but he is the only snake breeder I have heard refer to a female hatchling as "Sweetheart" . I can only applaud the principled stance you are taking on this issue .

 

very interesting post and a big thumbs up :2thumb: to those trying to do something about it

 

Having no Internet access can be a real pain in the backside.

To be fair Debbie has put forward our point perfectly.

Personally we are breeders of corns who strive for quality and do it entirely for the hobby. Our view on SG is that we will not be happy to pass on what I consider to be a deleterious gene in any of our animals. Having now seen homozygous SG animals live and feed it really upsets me. As Debbie said taking the stance that we will not sell any at risk animals until we have tested our lines is a tough one. Personally I believe it is the right thing to do. We will test breed and we will euthanise all animals from the test breedings. It will be very tough for us to do but we feel that it is the only course of action that we can take to feel responsible in the hobby.

Other people will have different opinions and that is fine, we will not rubbish others on this issue. We will however test breed all our at risk animals and make SG free sunkissed and het animals available.

As Toyah points out that proving 100% is very difficult but breeding a het SG to another animal and producing 16 hatchlings without homozygous SG gives you a 99% clear animal. That is better than not knowing in my opinion.

Euthanising the test bred animals will be the toughest part of this process and I can understand why others would not put themselves through that. I just worry about how quickly it will spread if people continue to breed at risk animals and not consider the consequences. To illustrate my point - Look how many animals are het Amel without the owner knowing about it!

Some big US breeders crossed Sunkissed and therefore SG out to many projects and other morphs in the early 2000s right up until the last few years. This means that potentially Lavender, Hypo, Motley, Diffused etc etc can carry the SG gene. A lot of animals have been imported to the UK and Europe from those big breeders in recent years.

I just hope that people are not surprised when it starts popping up in a amels and lavenders

This is a very tricky subject and a hugely depressing one. It will also pick at peoples emotions because of the heartache of watching SG animals. We believe they don't suffer but they are clearly very impacted by it.

Personally I would implore breeders to stop selling Sunkissed morphs and test as that is my opinion on the subject. it is not too late to slow down the spread of the gene. However, I think it is likely too late to stop it entirely.

PM me if you want to talk about the testing or how we are going about it.

Cheers
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For those interested here is a video of a homozygous SG hatchling from 2010:

YouTube - Specialcorns Stargazing 081.AVI

Cheers
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For anyone else wanting to learn more about this gene, I thought I'd link to a thread on another forum about it too - Stargazing - Page 2 - CornSnakes.com Forums

 

For anyone else wanting to learn more about this gene, I thought I'd link to a thread on another forum about it too - Stargazing - Page 2 - CornSnakes.com Forums

Wow that's quite the coincidence that you linked that - that's the thread I tried to start about Stargazing prior to starting this thread :lol2:

 

Bump

Just thought I should try reviving this old thing :whistling2:

 

Just thought I should try reviving this old thing :whistling2:

Hi all...
I do know that Ads and Debbie have now proved 'some' (not sure how many) 99% gazer free.... They looked really chuffed.. And so they should be

I for one say to them. WELL DONE YOU TWO... HUGE RESPECT TO YOU BOTH :notworthy:

:notworthy:

If i decide to have sunkissed now i can safely buy with relative confidence..!!!!
I have prior avoided sunkissed for this reason... !!!!!!!!

 

a bit more info on SG here: Stargazer Corn Snake - Ians Vivarium and a full forum section dedicated to SG and the testing: Star Gazing - Ians Vivarium Cornsnakes

The more people that are aware of stargazing in corns the better, and the more that can be done to help combat the spread of the gene.

 

stargazing

found out after i brought one that sunkissed are prone to star gazing, and mine has never been right since i got him, seems very flighty all the time and an on off feeder. Would never breed from him.

 

found out after i brought one that sunkissed are prone to star gazing, and mine has never been right since i got him, seems very flighty all the time and an on off feeder. Would never breed from him.

Gutting that you found out about it after you bought your snake ): Though Stargazing has been spread to other morphs so it isn't just Sunkissed's that might carry it it.
If you really wanted a sunkissed corn you could breed from ProCorns and a couple of other breeders are working on testing their snakes to figure out which ones are clear of Stargazing, and I believe they're already coming out with results with this years clutches : victory:

 

Hey,

We have a lot of homozygous gazer animals here that we are keeping for research and testing. We also have a number of het animals. As far as we can see there is nothing in the het animals (behaviour or otherwise) that indicates a het for Stargazer.

Between us and a friend this year we have proven 3 major Sunkissed lines from Europe to be carrying Stargazer. This probably means that unless imported from the USA that a large percentage of the Sunkissed lines that are in the UK will have come from these.

It is harder to say about animals that came from the USA as there are many, many Sunkissed lines crossed and crossed because they have had the gene for longer.

It's sad to think that this gene has been propogated so much as is likely to be carried by a lot more than just Sunkissed animals.

Cheers
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Between us and a friend this year we have proven 3 major Sunkissed lines from Europe to be carrying Stargazer. This probably means that unless imported from the USA that a large percentage of the Sunkissed lines that are in the UK will have come from these.

It is harder to say about animals that came from the USA as there are many, many Sunkissed lines crossed and crossed because they have had the gene for longer.

It's sad to think that this gene has been propogated so much as is likely to be carried by a lot more than just Sunkissed animals.

Cheers
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I guess part of the problem is people having sold snakes from Sunkissed projects that are visual anery/amel/etc but not sunkissed but have a chance of carrying stargazing, and people buying them as a normal anery/amel/etc :/