Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I recently purchased this female greybanded kingsnake from John Schmitt (Suncoast Herpetological) at the Tampa show. He has beautiful greybands and is a really nice guy. I would recommend his snakes to anyone looking for a new snake. I got her to eat a frozen/thawed pinky on the first try last week. Her name is Sofie.

That is a gorgeous snake!! She looks like she will turn into a darker grayband with bright orange. Congratulations!!

I purchased this male from John Schmitt in Daytona 2006 and I felt that his graybands were the best there. Their color and detail was intense on all babies. I probably spent over half an hour looking at just his graybands before I finally settled on this one.

Thank you for posting your pic!! Keep us posted with pics as she gets older!

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Genesis 1:1

That is one of the most (if not THE most) gorgeous blairs I have seen! AWESOME!!!

Wayne

Thank you sir! Very cool of you to say so.

I have been telling people, Suncoast Herps has killer alterna! That is why it took me forever to make up my mind, as John Schmitt had so many nice alterna to choose from. My friend Scott also picked up his first grayband in Daytona from Suncoast as well.

I want to see how the original poster of this thread's snake turns out within the next few years by them posting pics as it grows.

Take care!
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Genesis 1:1

awesome!!! We will be waiting to see that! See ya.

Wayne

I can't believe it took you 30 minutes to decide on the snake??? I think it would have taken me less than 30 seconds to make that decision!

~ Mike Russo

John does awesome generics and I have a few from him. He has been breeding for color and feed response and while many say you can't get feed response from breeding I have had great luck with his line. I get about, well no exactly, 90% feeders by the third offering each year. (10 eggs 3 years in a row with only one hold out) Also as the original poster mentioned he is a great guy. If you go to a Florida show he always seems to be right nest to Lee Abbott and Lee also has nice generics. What I really like about John is he has so many to choose from most years and if you want to gamble you can wait until the spring show and see what he held back. Then you get to see how the individuals are growing.

John is one of my favorite commercial breeders and he has kept quality and manages to breed all his own stuff, and that is hard to do when you have his numbers and still work full time.

One of the great guys.

Jason

John is one of the good guys in this business. He is always a pleasure to deal with and his snakes are always nothing short of exceptional. I purchased 2 snakes from him this past year and 3 the year before in Daytona.

Yeah, the reason it took me 30 minutes as well to decide is the fact that this male I got from him was one of the last I took a serious look at. Every grayband he had was exceptional, and making a decision of WHICH one to get was very hard. I had one already picked out and then picked up his deli cup he was in, held it up against the lamp to get a better look, muttered something like, " holy crap..", and it was all over from there.

He even had an alterna phase with a slight bit of small orange specks and the ground color was actually a grayish blue. I have never seen a baby grayband with those colors. Needless to say, it was not there when I went back for a second look. ha ha...

I highly recommend John Scmitt for not only graybands but pits as well.
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Genesis 1:1

LOL Yeah I did the same with about 150 babies. I picked out all the ones I really liked then went through those 20+ and got it down to 5 and then I just had someone else pick one out of the 5. I was pissed at myself for not getting a couple from him because the male I got else where was not as nice looking as the female from him. The spit out nice babies for me though. So the next 2 years I got one or two each year from him to add in more females.

As a side note he told me the following. Before he tries to feed for the first time he packs all his babies up to go to Daytona and back each year and then he starts trying to feed. I have heard this from a few people that the travle seems to spark non-feeder babies into feeding. Just a thought.

Jason

Yeah, that may be a thing to remember about the babies.

Yeah, you sound like me picking thru all this snakes. lol!

Is that snake one you got from Schmitt? Very pretty.
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Genesis 1:1

It is a bad pic of a offspring from animals from him. She is better looking but the pic is washed out in bad light from a bad camera setting. I don't have many shots of animals that I am not selling. I need to do something about that one day.

Jason

Regardless of the pic, she is an outstanding and gorgeous specimen!
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Genesis 1:1

Thank you for the kind words...that is one beautiful snake you got there too. I will definately be sure to keep posting pics as she gets older!

Please do, as I would love to see how your snake turns out!
That abberant orange pattern it has on one of it's splotches looks familiar, as I may have seen it this past year in Daytona.
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Genesis 1:1

Discern - That is an awesome generic! Very Very Nice. I think I would pee myself if I caught one in the wild. Maybe even Bowel control. That would be very possible.

JL - I hope you now have the fever for the flavor of an Alterna. Nobody can have just one.. nobody...

Best wishes,

Steven