Reptile & Amphibian Forums

A very pretty hatchling suboc, caught on the Boy Scout Rd in Jeff Davis Co. last May. It is a bit more orange than the photo shows. This animal was TINY, and had a very fresh-looking umbilical scar. These Davis Mntns. subocs have to be my favorites.

Brad Chambers

Very nice catch. Very pretty.

Congrats on the find.

Sean.

Most of the ones we caught had the oversized H's but that is nicer background color than any I have seen there so far. Might go orange on you. Nice......Bill
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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

Yeah those Boy Scout Rd. animals typically have some of the darkest and thickest Hs of wild subocs.
Nice animal. Sorry for the large photo. I need to reshoot my Davis.

DR

Suboc.com

Nice one, Brad.
Are you heading out there again this year?
If that NAFTA truck route goes through Alpine, that could change significant parts of that area.
.

.
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Regards, Bill McGighan

Bill-yes I'm living in the Texas Hill Country (Kendall Co) now, and since I'm self-employed (and thus can make my own schedule) I plan to hit the Trans-Pecos for at least a few nights during the dark of the moon each month from May-September. hopefully we can meet up-are you planning any trips?

Brad Chambers

Hill Country - Beautiful area Brad.
I usually weasle in 4 to 6 trips per year to Davis Mtn.s area.
I'll check with you the next time I know I'm going.

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Regards, Bill McGighan

Sounds great Bill-but this time you have to promise not to push the lepidus off the road before we get to 'em ....

This animal is from river road three miles west of the town of Terlingua. It has orange inside the H's. This animal has a different look than most. This one is female.

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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

Hey Bill,
Good to see you back here.
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The diversity of H patterns is amazing.
You may have found a relative of this one.
It's from about the same location (probably within 3 miles).
This was a thin male and I let it crawl on.
.

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Regards, Bill McGighan

Hi Bill,
I never intended to breed Sub-oc’s. It started with the black on white from Gap and felt it was worth breeding to capture the genetics. My road trips were to say Hi to all my friends that were collecting grey banded king snakes. I was looking for Red/Pink Coachwhips. I am not going to list numbers but lets just I watched more then a few crawl off the road. Since orange and red are my favorite color in Sub-oc’s they are my only keepers. I have another orange female from 7 mile mark west of Terlingua that is in the blue right now. I will post some pics of her later……Bill#4

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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

you mentioned breeding the black on white to lock in the genetics. Have you produced offspring yet? If so do you have any pics of the suboc's your producing?

I'm mostly curious because with the morph projects going on with subocs we'll need unrelated/wild animals to outcross with and it's always a bonus if the outcross breeder is special in and of itself.

Also just nice to see all the locality variation for those of us too far away to field herp them.

Sean

I have produced 22 offspring from three separate wild females. One of the females was from Gap road. She made nine. To my surprise about half the offspring from all three females came out black and white. It might be dominant or co-dominant? Here is a sampling of offspring.

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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

those are really nice. I assumed the color was one that set in at older ages instead of at hatching.

If it wasn't for the 3 dif females all producing black on white offspring I would have said you might have gotten lucky and found an axathnic normal pattern wild suboc. Given that all three females would have to be het axanthic for that to be the case though makes me question it though.

It'll be really interesting to see how the genetics unfold.

Thaks for sharing them with us.

Sean.

Awesome subocs-any chance you'll produce more this year?

Brad Chambers

Their color is unchanged two years later and they will be breedable by next year. Here is one with a zipper pattern.

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"Life without risk is to merely exist."