The natural occuring desert phase "BALCK and WHITE" all have cream of yellow on the sides. What breeders tried to do is selectivily breed different locales of desert phase "BLaCK and WHITE" cal kings to DECREASE the cream. This is a sign that it is not a wild collected locale desert phase B&W cal king.

NOw to confuse things more. So many cal kings have been cross bred. Take the banan high yellow phase which was selectivly bred back in teh 80's. Well the next step was to bred those into the deserts phase and continue selective breeding to take out the yellow so the end result is a mostly all white desert phase cal kings ..which was also never found in the wild.

What i suggest is you get some locality captive bred desert phase cal kings and study them. Study how they look. That is what a naturally occuring desert phase should look like. Then you can begin to understand how breeding efforts changed the look to improve them to be MORE desert lokking whiter white and blacker black.


Whew, i know this is confusing . Which is why it is better to talk over the phone to explain to someone rather than typing because first it is important to know what you know to go back 30 years and explain the evolution of selective breeding with cal kings.

Get in touch with shannon. He always has some inuque locality B&W cal kings specimens. There are also msny other people here on this forum than either have some or can direct you to someone. Locality B&W cal kings are not hard to find and the owners that work with locality specimesn take great pride in keeping the lineages seperate. It makes it even more interesteing to know what the area is like they came from or how hard it is to find a clean one.

But if you just want a white belly Cal king. Go to a show like Dmon did and look through hundreds of deli cups and search the whole show until you find the one with the most whitests white.

Another thing....which i don't mean to make things more confusing. But even the white belly babies can develope this black tipping on the white scales when older. So the way the black bands are when they are young effect whether or not the white will have black tipping as they grow into adults.

If it was me. I would just get some adults at a show where you can see how they turn out. Then breed them and select the best cleanest whites/blackest babies fom that clucth and sell the adults and the rest. That way you know how they will look as they get older (no black tipping) and improve the look by selective breeding yourself.


All this research and hunting at a show for a nice pair can be a lot of fun if you know what you are looking for. You will be very happy with some real nice B&W Cal kings that you diligently searched for and did homework on.

Go to Daytona. You will find the most awesome pair there if you are paetent and search many tables.
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