Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Okay, my first question has to do with sex results. My friend bred our MBKs last year, incubated the eggs at 85 degrees and all 11 hatched male. This year I bred them, kept them in a room that stayed between 80-82 degrees but they weren't in an incubator so there was a natural night time drop. But once again all 13 hatched male. Should we try incubating lower or higher? Or would the fact that the male wasn't cooled have been the cause?

My second question has to do with the MBK-splendida topic. I'm not sure if you remember, but last year (around July or August of 2005), my friend posted pics of two hatchlings that looked like splendida. So that's two out of the 11 babies that hatched with full body splendida pattern, with a few other hatchlings having very very faint pattern, and a few that were clean black. All coming from normal black MBKs. Well, this year from the same parents, another two out of a clutch of 13 hatched with the full body splendida pattern. We held back one yearling from last year, and while its patterning has faded, you can still see some of the splendida pattern. I thought it was interesting because the consistency really does suggest a morph, but I'm personally not interested enough to investigate further. Would anybody here be interested in starting a project with these splendida look-alikes?

This is a really bad pic of one of the hatchlings last year. The poor lighting doesn't show just how bright the yellow was.

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chickabowwow

a few, myself included beleive mbks to be just a melanistic form of l.g.splendida but thats really just a lumpers point of view,but splendy looking babies popping up kinda ads credence to that thought i do find it odd you had 24 babies over the course of 2 seasons and produced 100% males, thats pretty wild ive never had that happen,may i ask how you sexed them and are you 100%sure of your method?,,,,,,,thomas davis

Incubation temperature has nothing to do with determining the sex of common kingsnake offspring - it's determined genetically. It seems very unlikely that both clutches consisted of all males. You did not mention what method you used to sex the babies.

Tim

Third Eye

They were all popped.
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chickabowwow

This is an interesting part of working with Splendida. 12 years or so ago there was a shop here in Austin that had a clutch of Splendida looking snakes. I thought they were pure Splendida and wanted a female so I picked the best colored. Then the clerk told me that he wouldn't guarantee that the pattern wouldn't fade or even disappear. He said they had a clutch from the same parents the previous year in which half lost all or most of the pattern. Mine never lost her pattern nor did it fade. But I wouldn't be surprised if the MBK is the melanistic form of Splendida. A breeder in the pacific Northwest was offering black Splendida last year. Who knows???

Pat

Can someone give me an idea when the splendy pattern starts to turn MBK? My Phatty is a yearling - if she's gonna go MBK when would it start to show?

Thanks,

John D

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I am so not lesdysxic!

0.1 Creamsicle Cornsake "Yolanda"
1.0 Bairds Ratsnake "Steely Dan"
0.1 Desert Kingsnake "FATTY"
0.1 Black Rat (WV Rescue) "Roberta"

I most certainly would! Send me an email.
Todd Hughes