Here's the Rowan Co., NC, male I got from you last year, Shane. It's turned out to be the nicest of the trio, at least to my tastes: bold pattern, with the cream areas very sharply defined and clean. The half dozen wild kings i'd seen in coastal va/nc had very wide bands but they were neither crisp nor clean, with lots of black mixed into the white areas. The two females have narrower bands, a few "slanted" bands, and are not quite as clean. But they're still nice.

The male's 223 grams. One of the females is 211 grams, and the other has always been a slower feeder and is at 109 grams. I could've grown them faster but during the winter I spend most of my time at home in Florida so they were basement-cooled here in northern KY/greater Cincinnati most of the time. I tried FR's suggestion that colubrids will eat thru their winter cool down, and found he was right, at least with this small test group: On my infrequent time with them thru the winter I'd return them to still-cool house temps (68-70; the basement was probably 10-15 degrees cooler) for just a day or two and they'd readily feed. I'd sometimes return them to the basement only a couple days after they fed, and that didn't seem to bother them at all, whereas in the past i'd meticulously delay putting animals in brumation until at least two weeks after they'd last fed.

All are eating frozen. In the hottest part of a hot Midwest summer here they've surprised me by abruptly showing much less interest in feeding, almost mountain king-like. I haven't sorted out that behavior yet but i'm wondering if it's temp related. I've also followed FR's and Rainer's recommendations for temp gradations, so the snakes are in tanks with ambient temps ~72 at one end, and heated to ~86 at the other. I'm wondering if turning off the heat might return them to their previous aggressive feeding. Or it could turn them off completely.

Anyway, Shane, I'm delighted with the snakes and especially with this male.

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