Snake of the Day 03-08-17

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Laid in February (last month) these eggs are from a het Scaleless “corn” that exhibits the “throw-back” coloration of their Emory’s Ratsnake ancestry?  All Scaleless “corns” in the hobby toDAY derive from the original pairing that rendered the first Scaleless “snake” from the inter-species crossing of Emory’s Ratsnake, Pantherophis emoryi X Cornsnake Pantherophis guttatus.  Therefore, all Scaleless corns in the hobby toDAY are descendants of an Emory’s Ratsnake Pantherophis emoryi  via the inter-species paring of that first Ratsnake Pantherophis emoryi X Cornsnake Pantherophis guttatus marriage.  Being relatively few generations since then, we occasionally see “corns” with a distinctly gray ground coloration, not unlike most Emory’s Ratsnakes (aka: Great Plains Ratsnakes), and decidedly UNlike most wild-type corns (except for some Miami locality and Miami Phase corns found in the extreme Southeastern regions of their Natural U.S. habitat). Next year I hope to breed this female to a wild-type Emory’s Ratsnake to eventually create Scaleless snakes that have olive green markings on a gray background (essentially Scaleless Emory’s Ratsnakes that will, of course, be just as inter-species hybrid as toDAY’s Scaleless corns).  Green markings are uncommon in SOME parts of the Emory’s Ratsnake’s Natural range in the wild, but in my decades of collecting Emory’s Ratsnakes in at least eight states of the U.S., I’ve seen many more of them with green markings than brown.   S

Snake of the Day 03-06-17

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This 17″ male 2016 Extreme Okeetee (het for Scalelessis currently eating frozen/thawed pinky mice.   One of his parents was a Scaleless corn, so he is het for Scaleless.  His $325.00 price includes     

note:  ALL Scaleless corns in the hobby toDAY (including SCALED corns that are carriers of the Scale-less mutation–aka Het Scaleless) are descendants of the original pairing of a Corn Snake to an Emory’s Ratsnake (aka: Great Plains Ratsnake) and are therefore technically inter-species hybrids. 

Snake of the Day 03-05-17a

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This 20″ male 2016 Tessera is currently eating frozen/thawed small or medium pinky mice.  His amazing orange coloration was inherited from his parents; sire is one of the original F1 Tesseras in the hobby and his damme is a high-orange Extreme Okeetee.  His $215.00 price includes       

Snake of the Day 03-05-17

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{product id=1625}

This 20″ male 2016 Tessera is currently eating frozen/thawed small or medium pinky mice.  His amazing orange coloration was inherited from common genes (not from a mutant gene) of his parents; sire is one of the original F1 Tesseras in the hobby and his damme is a high-orange Extreme Okeetee.  His $215.00 price includes      

Snake of the Day 03-04-17

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This 14” female 2016 Reverse Okeetee is currently eating frozen/thawed small or medium pinky mice.  Her $135.00 price includes      

Snake of the Day 03-03-17

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This young adult Visual-het Red Factor Blizzard male bred this very old female Blizzard a couple of weeks ago.  Next year, this male will breed a few females that are not quite safely large enough to breed this season, which will render, of course, a percentage of Red Factor Homozygote Blizzards.  We’re expecting the pink to POP on those homozygotes next year?  Note the cataracts on eyes of the female (she hatched in 2002), who has been a very productive SMR breeder for many years.  

Snake of the Day 03-02-17

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A 2016 female Scaleless Extreme Okeetee corn snake that will be headed to Canada as soon as SHIPPING weather improves.  

note:  ALL Scaleless corns in the hobby toDAY (including SCALED corns that are carriers of the Scale-less mutation–aka Het Scaleless) are descendants of the original pairing of a Corn Snake to an Emory’s Ratsnake (aka: Great Plains Ratsnake) and are therefore technically inter-species hybrids.  A subject of debate is the question, “how many generations of breeding away from one of the original species are necessary to consider them pure corn snakes?”.  Reality dictates that if you put a drop of milk into a glass of water, it’s milk water, but if you pour that glass of milk water into a swimming pool of water, it is still fundamentally milk water.  We can all see that some of the shared genes between those two species will be retained in future generations, causing features not common to one, both, or either species.  I definitely understand that even only 1% alien species proportion–even 500 generations after the first inter-species hybridization–constitutes ALL descendants as being hybrids, but many species and sub-species toDAY are thought to be the result of ancient hybridization between species or genera?  At SMR, we prefer to call all snakes “hybrids” if we are certain that they have alien ancestry? 

Snake of the Day 03-01-17

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After noting a week-or-so ago that the female Granite Gray-banded Kingsnake, Lampropeltis alterna, above appeared to be ovulating, I introduced the more colorful of my male Leucistic Alterna.  My other Leucistic males have little or no orange suffusion, so they’re essentially all-white.  Note the over-sized eyes of the male Leucistic in this picture.  I believe that the over-sized eyes are a collateral (?synergistic?) feature of blue-eyed-white serpents, much like the high frequency of deafness in blue-eyed white dogs, cats, and other species?  So far, no evidence of marriage between these two.  Stay tuned . . . 

Snake of the Day 02-15-17bb

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Laid yesterDAY on Valentine’s Day, 18 beautiful eggs from two corns het for Scaleless Sunglow Motley.  Just getting started, this is one of six clutches of 2017 eggs in incubation now.  More added to this inventory daily for the next few weeks.  The second of three waves of adult female corns will begin laying in roughly two more months.