Banded is the normal appearance of the Cal king. Striped is produced by a mutant gene that is dominant to the normal gene. A heterozygous striped king (with a striped gene paired with a normal gene) may show considerable variation. A heterozygous striped Cal king could have a nice stripe, a series of short stripes, a series of dots instead of stripe segments, a series of stripe segments with some bands, etc. Richard Zweifel has some good pictures of variations in his paper back in one of the 1983 issues of the Journal of Heredity.

Anyway, crossing a striped with a normal (banded) Cal king should produce some striped or striped variation babies. It depends on whether the striped snake is homozygous striped (with a pair of striped mutant genes) or heterozygous striped (with a striped gene paired with a normal gene). If your striped snake is homozygous striped, all the babies will be striped or some sort of variant striped as above. If your striped snake is heterozygous striped, the statistical figure is half the babies will be normal (banded) and half the babies will be striped or some sort of variant striped as above.

Hope this helps.

Paul Hollander

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