Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Since you bred the first albino Cal Kings maybe you could tell us where they originated. Was the founder a wild caught? If so where was it collected and by who?
Always been curious about this, thanks.

I thank your for asking.

The original male that founded the albinos of many kinds of kingsnakes was found in Balboa Park, That is the park that the San Diego Zoo is located. It was brought to the reptile house.

They had it for many years, 15 comes to mind, but I am not positive about that. Then the zoo got a new curator that did not care of abnormal reptiles(albinos, oddities etc) And they traded it to Western Zooligical. A reptile shop what dealt with all sort of reptiles. It was traded for a mangrove snake and something else, a tree boa maybe. Western Zoo, sold it to a lifelong friend of mine Ted Davis. Ted and I herped all over heck and back. I met Ted years before the Kingsnake project, at another Reptile shop we both worked at.
Ted had it for a number of years. I was already a bigtime kingsnake breeder, Ted did not want to get rid of it. During the time he had it, he bred it once and produced 3 offspring.

He was very very protective of that old snake.

He then sort of lost interest. The old male was getting old, it had cataracts and such and started to crawl funny. So he decided to get out of the project. He asked me if I wanted it. At the time I was not into albinos. But I got it anyway.

He gave me the old male and traded the three offspring. For some baby blairs and such.

The old male was about 22 years old, when I got him. The offspring were 3 years old and about 15 inches.

He told me two of the babies were females and one was a male. I got them in Dec of that year.

I kept the females active and tried to feed them up and get some size on them. I cooled the male.

Within two months, both females cycled and bred the male. They were very small, one had six eggs and one had seven. Funny thing, a short time after I brought the male het out of cooling, he developed eggs and I bred him(a her now) to the father and produced six more eggs.

I also bred that old male to 7 more female calkings of various locals. Bandeds, newporters, black coastals, desert black and whites and even a normal striper.

He fertilized 10 different females that spring. He never bred again, hahahahahahhahahahahahahaha ever.

The next year, I bred a year old male het back to the three original hets and they produced something like 15 albinos that year(all three double clutched)

The next year, pattern breeding occured and now you see what happened.

What amazes me is, his genes, that is, genes from one individual snake, traveled around the whole world within a very few years. And now thirty years later, his genes are going strong. So much for inbreeding being a problem.

Consider, I was already in the middle of local production of many normal local kings, so that project was turbocharged.

At the time, there was albino corns, but corns did not appear much different then real pretty regular corns. So a snake like an albino Striped king, was very very different. There was also a few albino gophers around but they were like the albino corns. Cheers

Wow interesting story. Thanks for sharing.
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Mike
KingPin Reptiles Inc.
www.freewebs.com/mikesnake
www.freewebs.com/badyear2005

Neat... what year was that in??

Is this the same albino Cal King that Joan Embry (sp) had on the Johnny Carson Show in 1970 or 1971?

Kerby...

That's fantastic, thanks. I remember mailing away for The Tropical Fish Pond (Jeff Gee) price list, I think it was 1982. Albino Cal Kings were I believe $400 for hatchlings.

Jeff now lives in Portal Az. I have property just west of his.

I did not know of him when he was in Chicago(is that right?)

I sold the very first one offerred to a couple in phoenix az. They took a bank loan to purchase the snake. I charged $300. I am not sure what Mr. Love will say about the industry, but that was a strong part of the begining of the industry. Before that, snakes had little value. The second one went to Don Hamper. Neither one bred them.

Also of note. I like others later, sold hundreds of hets as normals. Whats so funny was, I never heard of pleasent surprises. Very little breeding in those days.

Again, the actual begining of the industry was not me, or other breeders. It was a fella named John Ruiz and his sidekick, Steve O. With John being the real begining. He built and controlled the market. That is industry. Us breeders, just made stuff for him to control. He kept the value up and that was the key. It really had little to do with breeders. Because he also controlled the wild caught market as well. To control is, to purchase all of something and let it out at a controlled rate. This is something missing today. Cheers

I believe Tropical Fish Pond was Michigan. I also got Jeff's list after he moved to AZ. The big guys to me back then were mostly guys I found though the San Diego Herp Socioty. Bob Applegate, Gary Sipperly, Terry Lilly and Lloyd Lemke. I also remember you from the Vivarium. You were saying some interesting stuff about herps even then. Glad you're still around.

Frank, do you remember the year the first albino cal king was found? And was that the same albino cal king that was on the Johnny Carson show in the early 1970's?

Thanks

P.S. I went out last Friday and saw a few lizards up here (5,000 ft) around Prescott, no snakes. I did find a snake shed under a board, but I'm not sure if it was from last fall.

Kerby...

You need to wrie a book about these experiences and your general thoughts about raising kingsnakes. If you've already written a book, please let me know the title so that I can purchase it.

Thanks,

Bill
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It's not how many snakes you have. It's how happy and healthy you can keep them.

Yeah Frank, a book with tons of pics of the snakes you have produced through the years, even the crosses. That would be some book, with lots of field stories!
Todd Hughes