SMR Archive

Those close to me know that my favorite corn snake morph was always the Reverse Okeetee, now eclipsed only by the High White Reverse Okeetee.  It is unbelievably difficult to achieve clean, crisp, and white ground color zones through clever selective breeding, and good ones like this are still uncommon in the hobby.  This female didn’t lay very many eggs for her first-ever clutch, but next year she will make up for it.  If she is a ten on the 1-10 scale, her husband is a strong nine, so their kids should be eye-popping.   We expect to have some of these beautiful corns available for sale in mid-July, but more will be shippable in mid-August.                             

This female Ultramel is perhaps one of the most poignant examples in the contraversial debate over the origin of this mutation.  Her markings are precisely like all of the original F1 out-crosses of Corn Snake to Gray Rat Snake I have ever seen.  All Ultra-type mutants (including Ultramels) are hybrids of those two species. Though I have NEVER heard of anyone crossing those two species since the introduction of the Ultra Mutation into corn snake herpetoculture (except to challenge the declaration of the originator that he did indeed use those two species to make Ultra-type Corns), this one is a good example of the phenotype for F1 Gray Rat/Corn out-crosses.  That said, I’m honored to have her for many reasons.  She is beautiful, large, friendly, and VERY fertile.   Here, she shows off her 32-egg clutch on May 17th, with no slugs.  Ordinarily we do not over-moisten moss for the nest box (evidenced here by its dark coloration), but I was out of town for two DAYs when she was due to lay, and when that happens I always over-hydrate moss so that if they lay the eggs on the 1st DAY of my absence, there is less likelihood of the eggs dehydrating before I can set them up. 

Note her “necklace” of eggs in the right-hand vertical egg shot – denoting the lower group of eggs in the mother-&-clutch shot.  Perhaps one in 20 of my female corns lay eggs in connected strings like this.  Had this string not been broken, the eggs would probably have been massed in one pile. Thank you, John Finsterwald (Zorro) for this awesome corn.  Her brood will consist  of Ultramels Charcoals, Blizzards, and more. BTW, I’m positive that John F. has never crossed Gray Rat Snakes with Corn Snakes so this beautiful specimen just happens to show more throwbacck Rat Snake than Corn Snake features.  In other words, her parents were likely of lineage much closer to the original hybrid pairing than most of them in the hobby toDAY.  Most Ultramels have been out-bred to pure corns enough generations to render more classical corn snake features.  The Ratsnake markings of this one render this Ultramel the exception to most of them in the hobby toDAY.