Reptile & Amphibian Forums

First off, any snake that you like and appeals to you personally is a good snake. However, I am sure that there are certain characteristics that make some particular snakes more desirable than others, even from the same clutch. That said, I am often confused by comments that posters make about pictures that we post here in the forum.

As a novice to the hobby, how do you tell a "good" snake from an "average" snake. What makes a "Blue Ribbon" winning Reverse Okeetee? What traits make an Anery worthy of selecting as a "holdback"?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what do you old timers look for when grading snakes?

(If possible, please post example pix of "good" and "average" of the same morphs)

Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder.

But there are some universal truths.

When anerythristic Hondurans came onto the market, I thought "those things look like a snake in a jar of formaldehyde." Meaning that the bright orange and black snakes were devoid of one of their best features: orange. Therein lies one "truth" - rarity. If it's the only one, people will like it, because those that have been breeding snakes have never seen anything like it, and they appreciate that something new has been created via selective breeding.

Another "truth" is color. Breeders shoot for jet black rather than dark brown, bright white rather than off white, yellow rather than cream. One of the goals of selective breeding is the refinement of color. The more "extreme" (think Harold & Kumer Go to White Castle) the color, the better. Solid color is better than a mix of bits of color.

In addition to this, there's pattern. Uniformity is key here. A clean, evenly striped corn will find more fans that unevenly striped or broken-striped examples. The same could be said for zigzag and banded corns.

So these are three keys for breeders strive to produce to "one up" each other: rarity, color and pattern.

I myself am working on patternless corns. They are derived from striped corns and babies with the least amount of striping are "held back" to continue the selective breeding project. So far almost all these snakes have some striping on their neck. What would make one of these of higher "quality" than another is the lack of striping.

You mentioned Okeetees: With reverse, the width of the white borders outlining the blotches make the snake of higher "quality." The same is often true with the standard Okeetee phase. But with both snakes, having solid, bright blotches on a solid, bright background color are important as well.

Corns snakes that have visual impact are what people at shows stop and stare at.

T

Third Eye

Well put Tim. Speaking of your project, have you tried adding some blood red to it to help with pattern reduction? That is one of the most unicolored/unpatterned morphs around.

Bloodreds are based on normally patterned snakes with blotches rather than stripes. Therefore mixing a stripe with a bloodred wouldn't give you the immediate results of breeding a reduced striped snake to another reduced stripe snake.

Tim

>>First off, any snake that you like and appeals to you personally is a good snake. However, I am sure that there are certain characteristics that make some particular snakes more desirable than others, even from the same clutch. That said, I am often confused by comments that posters make about pictures that we post here in the forum.
>>
>>As a novice to the hobby, how do you tell a "good" snake from an "average" snake. What makes a "Blue Ribbon" winning Reverse Okeetee? What traits make an Anery worthy of selecting as a "holdback"?
>>
>>Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what do you old timers look for when grading snakes?
>>
>>(If possible, please post example pix of "good" and "average" of the same morphs)

It truly is in the eye of the beholder but there are things that people look for in certain morphs.
Take reverse okeetees...As Tim stated the wider and whiter the borders with bright saddle and background colors the more desireable the reverse okeetee.
Same as the "normal" okeetee. The blacker and wider the borders combined with the brighter saddles and background the better the okeetee.
With a lot of people a keeper anery is one where there is a contrast between the saddles and background but also a nice sheen fron an angle and no yellow.
There are people that like yellow in their anerys and yellow will usually creep in eventually but an anery without yellow is more desireable to a lot of people.

with every morph there is that something. Whatever catches the eye. If you start a breeding project, no matter what project, normals, amels anerys or more advanced projects the first thing you need to decide is what YOU like about them. What is it that caught YOUR eye to begin with. Think about that and think about what you want the offspring to look like. When you have a clutch hatch out there will almost always be something about a couple of snakes in the clutch that will catch your eye.
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Corn snakes and rat snakes..No one can have just one.
"Resistance is futile"
Jimmy Johnson
(Draybar)
Draybars Snakes

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The others made some very good reasons, as well as some great examples of desirable traits that would make for some unique animals to hold back to breed, and/or sell......here is an example of what is known in the market as a "sunglow" albino. It came from a clutch of very average looking "amels". When I looked at the entire clutch in a big pile in the cage, I noticed it looked a little different than the others. Cornsnakes, either normal, or albino, get more red/orange as they age,and also can tend to get some yellow highlights as well. This particular snake really didn't look anything like it does here in the photo when he was a new hatchling. But as he aged, he started to get a VERY solid orange background, with even darker orange blotches. he didn't have any white at all bordering the saddles as is typical in almost all blotch patterned "amels". This is how the name "Sunglow" was "coined", because of it's solid, vivid orange coloration...............................................Doug

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Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!