Category: SOTD

Two 2018 Amel Tessera corn snakes; typical Amel Tessera (top) and Cherry Amel Tessera (bottom).       

Though we no longer produce Hypo Charcoal corn snakes, I thought you’d enjoy seeing how curious newly hatched corns can be.  I keep each brood of hatchlings in their incubation boxes until their first shed.  They like balling up, vying for the most comfortable spot in the heap, benefiting from temperature and humidity trapped in the collective.     

Many of you have heard/read me say, “it’s often unwise to acquire a corn snake based on its hatchling phenotype (appearance)”.  Five months ago, toDAY’s featured SOTD was a stunning Banded High-white Reverse Okeetee–showing only a faint blush of orange in otherwise white ground color zones (see pic 2 toDAY).  From parents Miami Okeetee X Miami Okeetee (obviously, both het Amel), toDAY, the dirty white ground color zones are showing much more color.  Seems that the genes from the Okeetee branches of the familyi tree are gradually imposing their ancestral wild color influrences?    Bonus PIC . . .

“Nature IS art”, as Donovan once pointed out to me.  I could dig deeply enough to see who bought this beauty, but in the meantime, if someone has this 2011 Sunglow Motley I’m sure we’d all love to see how it looks as an adult?  What an artful example of bilateral symmetry?  Bonus PIC . . .

First, the discoverer of this amazing corn snake mutation deserves more credit than she gets.  Thank you, Barbara Velthuysen, for discovering Micro-scale corn snake mutants, and especially for all of the hard work and years you invested to preserve them in the hobby.  Most of our first 2019 “wave” of hatchlings here at SMR are from het-to–het Scaleless corns and Micro-scale hets.  Here are three of the first 2019 Micro-scale (MS) mutants that hatched in late February.  If we sell any of them this year, it will be after consultation with my project partner, TARA SMALL.  Bonus PIC . . .

Photo of a brood of freshly hatched Blizzard corns photographed a few years ago here at SMR.  Not all Blizzards hatch without showing their markings.  I’ve seen many showing markings at this age mature to be essentially pattern-less as adults, but most Blizzard corns produced in the U.S. have tinges of carotenoid yellow at maturity.  Blizzards are Amel Charcoal mutants, so there is no melanin in them.  The black crescents seen in the eyes are thought to be areas of tissue with density sufficient not to reflect light?  Bonus PIC . . .

Parents of this 2019 aberrant Scaleless Amel corn are a male het for Striped Butter and a female het for Saffron (Amel Sunkissed Caramel).  This type of aberrant pattern is not uncommon among Scaleless corns, and the yellow markings are are surely inherited from the Caramel gene that both parents shared one copy of.  Not the bony look that is also commonly obvious in young (and sometimes older) Scaleless corns.  Scaled corns don’t show the ribs like this 5-DAY-old because their scale layer is too thick. 

note:  ALL Scaleless corns in the hobby toDAY (including SCALED corns that are carriers of the Scale-less mutation–aka Het Scaleless), AND even possible-hets are descendants of the original pairing of a Corn Snake to an Emory’s Ratsnake (aka: Great Plains Ratsnake).  Therefore, all Scaleless corns (and their scaled relatives) are inter-species hybrids.

Not as colorful as most pink and green Snows, this 2017 female will hopefully show more of her colors at maturity.