I first bred cal kings in 1964 and I was a pioneer in Cal king breeding and produced many of the morphs around today. Many of my breeding records are STILL unmatched to this day.
Oh and of course, I was from SoCal, and coastal(not hot or cold) actually the anaheim, buena park area. I never forced hibernated anything. There is absolutely no need to.
No snake needs to be 55F at anytime in its life. Period. Many of the years I kept kingsnakes, I simply kept them in a carport, with a small lite in the cage in the winter the got cooler and they warmed up, and when it warmed up and they bred BECAUSE I FED THEM.
Then I started moving around the country, and I kept my cal kings at 84F with constant lite, 24/7, 365 and they grew up fine and their breeding season began a month earlier each and every year. They had an 11 month yearly cycle. Then a decade or so later, after I moved to tucson, we started playing with hibernation or what people are calling brumation. Well you can do that, and it is easier on the keeper, you know, to forget about your snakes for part of the year. And if you get it right, it works, SORTA/marginally.
I found that if you allow them to find warm areas(hot spot, whatever) They grow faster, they produce more and get much larger and do so, for a very long time. With this method, I rasied individuals above record size in most of the species I worked with.
Back to the 84F Thing, that worked great with cal kings, but not so great with montane kings. So a little adjustment had to be made, montanes could not withstand temps consistantly over 80F(males) so we allowed most the the cage to cool down and left a 1/4 of the cage with a heat source, lite bulb, heat strip, etc. Then that worked well for all species.
In tucson, the summer heat, actually caused them to stop producing. To hot here starting in early June. But, if you cool the room so nights are cool, they will continue and even triple clutch. Well that was decades ago.
Last year I triple clutched a L.thayeri or two. But I kept them in a mouse room that has to stay cool.
Remember I said I moved all around the country, I built zoos for a living. Well a couple years in New Orleans, I lived in a stupid apartment and it never got cool, as the floors below you would heat up their houses and heat raises. The coolest I could get them was 65F and guess what, They bred like flys. Before that, I was doing a zoo in Seattle and they have basements that stay 55F or so, year around. Guess what, all I did was add heat and whamo eggs and babies out my ears.
Again, 55F is no magic number, in fact, its a very restrictive number. Why most/many of these folks preach this stuff is beyond me, narrow minded I guess. So pick a way, have fun and no worries mate. Oh and what will come from those three is a bunch of mucky mucks. That is a blend of all and everything inbetween. No one can predict exactly what, if those are captive produced, they are most likely het for everything under the sun.
The top, banded, and the bottom, striped, if wild caught could be homozygous for their expressed pattern, but the middle one is a cross of local natural phenotypes. Thats not bad or anything, it only means you can expect it to be christmas, you won't know whats in the package until they open. Cheers
