Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Ok, just wondering what exactly is a "Rusty ratsnake?" I saw one at a herp show a while back and it was very pretty. I'm mainly a Kingsnake breeder but DO have two ratsnakes in my collection (a black & a green intergrade). THANKS in advance,

Zee

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"I am an expert on everything, but I know so little and have so much to learn!" -Carsten "Zee" Zoldy-

"rusty" is the visual het form of leucistic. They can be quite diverse in the way they look. This is mine. He is the offspring of a leucistic x Whitesided. When I looked at pictures of others ( like Deweys) I see that they can look quite different than this too.

I should have mentioned that the one I saw was an Albino rusty ratsnake. . .He was white with reddish/pink coloring peppered down its' back, fading to a solid white down the posterior. It looked really interesting.

Zee
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"I am an expert on everything, but I know so little and have so much to learn!" -Carsten "Zee" Zoldy-

If rusty is simply het. for leucy, then why is it that often when breeding two rusties there are no leucy offspring?
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0.1 Snow Corn "Hope"
1. Orange Albino Black Ratsnake "Chunk" (Goonies)
.1 Orange Albino Black Ratsnake "Peaches"
0.0.1 MO Locale Black Ratsnake "Molly" (Flogging Molly)

"You can only take my money for so long. And then I don't have anymore, and then I get angry!"

Because you have only a 25% chance of getting one. Flip a coin 10 times and you should get 5 heads, 5 tails....if you get 7:3 then 8:2 then 6:4, does this change the odds? No. You have to remember that the 25% is just the odds...when Mendel (Father of genetics) did his pea plant crosses, he looked at thousands of results to come to the conclusion that you have a 25% chance of pure recessive from two heterozygous individuals....
So, after you average thousands of clutches, I bet you will see the numbers pan out pretty close to a 1:2:1 ratio (Normal:rusty:leucistic).

Ahhh, the Rusty talks again....
Rusty is a hypo type black rat. There are two strains of them, broken in northern or Ohio and the southern which I think came out of KY... I forgot. The more popular and abundant being the southern strain. I never heard of the Northern strain until I lived in Ohio and went to a show up there.
They do produce the leucy trait, though not every clutch. I have had some who produced for two years with no leucistics only to have them produce a half and half clutch the next year.
Here is the cool part, when you breed both strains together you get all normal babies het for both strains right? Well you do but if you breed those babies back to each other you get a 50/50 mix of normal and rusty. The issue there? is one strain co-dom and the other dom??? And I know what some people think about the hypo claim but it was proven by Dr. Bern and then by Dwight Good. Now, what is a brendle? Rock On, BLue