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Who needs hypos : )

They used to all look like this, but now I see brown "Brooksi."

another

Old school for sure !!!!!!!!...nice south florida king

Very nice indeed!

But some of my normal triple hets rival that because they trace back to original s. dade county stock.

i did not realize that when I first bought hypos for $700. and New England axanthics those normal genes were still floating around in there somehwere. .. Also the original peanut butters are locality stock. So some of my triple hets Peanut Butter x hypo x axanthics look like the old school high yellow brooksi we used to look for on breeders tables.

I guess that the ORIGINAL unkown hets were selectively bred for a light color and if anyone did not outcross their original stock (like me) you can get the high yellow "brooksi" phase from those traits because they came from high yellow brooks that everybody was trying to create at that time.

What is the history on yours? Do you know?
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ÌÏËÙÍ ËÁÂE!

"I have high friends in places."-H.Sherman in some bar

It's funny with alot of snakes, as I often discuss with my friends, but in most cases it is the original animal that I love the most, and not the myriad morphs of it. So it is good to see a post of a good old original Brooksi. I, too, have a pair of original "Canal" location Brooksis as m only Brooksis and am very happy with them. Hey Rainer, you're using one of my quotes. I am honored. Definitely worth a beer in Daytona.

I don't know the history on this one. I don't even remember the name of the guy I got her from. She was showing good light speckling as a baby so I thought she had a good chance for going high yellow. My first Brooksi was a male from Lemke that was a giant and bright yellow but he passed.

that runs me back to the mid 70's in florida city with art bass....louie porras....et al

I’m 47 years old, but in my time, hunting when I was seventeen and eighteen, they never use to all look like that. Even locality Brooks canal beauties rarely looked that good. I’ve hunted and caught them. I flipped grass mats along the canals, searched Krome, the Redlands and just outside the park and from my experience, they were a rare treat to find a decent one. The one in that picture blows “decent” away! Very beautiful Brooks.

You, Paul Stone and I would have "tripped-out" if we caught anything even resembling that back in "the day" especially in Bradley Field that one day when we all went around 1974,.......REMEMBER!!!...

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

Hey Doug, I think we were only like eleven herping Bradley field. Hard to remember! I wish we had a picture of us back then, what a trip that would be! I told you the first time I went on an “official” snake hunt with Paul, I wore these huge rubber boots, had my noose stick, I was totally outfitted for rattlesnake catching! Ha I must have looked pretty funny! He laughed his butt off at me! I was a serious little snake hunter wanna be, man.

HAHAHA!,...everytime I think about you all "gung ho'ed" and heavily suited up ready for battle, I giggle my @$$ off!..LOL!!!!

It's just one of those very priceless thoughts!,.....I can picture Paul in my mind just laughing, and mocking you to death!..hahaha!

I've thought about this for a good while now, and I didn't know Paul at ALL until he and I played "organized" football together at Holiday Park on Sunrise Blvd. I was 11 or 12 then, and the snake hunting thing was sometime after that, so it had to have been around 73-74 when we were 13-14 or so.

In any case,.....I'll ALWAYS cherish and remember those fun early herping years!,....I'm glad you also remember a bunch of cool snake episodes from yester-year!..haha!

I tell ya,...me and Paul walked to Dealy's Pet Store pretty often, and that was quite a walk from my house in Lauderdale Manors. But I would have walked hot coals to get to that Place!haha!,....as you well know, back in "the day", that place was truly "the BOMB!",...no place else could compare to their nice assortment of reptiles!

I just love thinking back to those "good ol' days" from time to time, and I'm glad you also remember the excitement of that particular store!,.......sniff!, sniff!,.....AHHHHH!,...I can almost smell the reptile feces from that store in my mind!..

later man!, ~Doug
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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

Paul and Devon Dartnell were in my forth grade class, so that was like ten years old. I know we went to Easterlin Park snake hunting, and Bradley Field maybe in sixth grade? So that’s like twelve or so I guess. I use to hunt along the railroad tracks between Sunrise and Oakland park, which is now I-95 through there. It was some nice palmetto scrub. Basically anywhere I could walk to. As soon as I got my drivers license I was hunting western Broward and Dade and then went over to the Fakahatchee Strand area west of highway 29 and never went anywhere else after that. By then I was bringing hots down to the Serpentarium, including a hypo moccasin that I gave to him! Spent a lot of time looking for Brooks down south. I don’t mean to be Major Buzzkill, but it is more truthful that a real nice yellow Brooks was a rarity in any locale. It just goes to say that they should be coveted, they are exceptional. There was never a consistent gorgeous golden yellow Brooks in any population. More of a myth, in my opinion. I did put in some major hours looking though. I did find a DOR king out on Wagonwheel Road in the Copeland Prairie that had very green markings like a highlighter green color. Very unusual. Someone posted a picture of a little one about four years ago that everybody thought was dyed or something, but I did see that one dead one that looked like that. I wish we could find a couple of those out there. That’s the real excitement of field collecting, that you find something very exceptional, which is what I would consider any very yellow Brooks kingsnake. If anybody is reading all this and you haven’t called your father yet, shame on you! I guess I better go call now…

I agree. I found the "canal" spot where there were supposed to be the original brooks kings. All I experienced were a few water snakes and alot of nasty biting deer flies and mosquitoes. They vary from the beautiful bright yellow ones , our "ideal" brooks king, to drab and dull brown, yet all are brooksi by locale definition.

According to Bill Love, who I quizzed on Brooksi not all that long ago told me what they considered to be the best Brooksi back in the day looked nothing like this one pictured in this post. Mark [Crimson King] also has mentioned this a few times.

If I am buying Brooksi, I really hope they look a lot like this one, no doubt everyone associates nice yellow with Brooksi.
However if the truth be known it is the hobby that has manipulated what Brooksi "should" look like, as apparently they were very pale yellow and I have not seen many like that in a long long time.

Now, most including myself market the yellow snakes as Brooksi. The darker and muddy ones are Floridana, and that is not quite right either but then again, Brooksi as a subspecies doesn't even exist.....and let's not even touch Goini for the moment.

Regardless the pictures are really nice. That's my kind of King.
Tom Stevens
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TomsSnakes.com

This was my point Upscale. That everyone was selectivly breeding fro the most high yellow phenotype. Then when the hypo brooks came along everyone scrubbed their high yellow normal phases and you don't see them in the hobby anymore.

But if anyone has a hypo that came from the Loves or Bard line those reccessives hets will look "high yellow" because the original reccessive traits were discovered from breeding sibling to sibling anyway. That is why after i bred my original hypo beard to a original New England axanthic (original meaning not outcrossed into other stock) the double hets came out very light yellow. so did the hypo x axantrhic x peanut butters.

I am raising the '07 babies up so when they get up in size i will be posting pics of them. But they remind me of the high yellow brooks that everybody used to look for on breeders tables back before the hypo hit the scene.
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ÌÏËÙÍ ËÁÂE!

"I have high friends in places."-H.Sherman in some bar

In the early days of the Love’s and the other dealers down here kids like me would bring in field collected stuff from all over. They had zillions to choose from. For the purpose of the price list, the yellow ones were “Brooks”. They were already selected from many examples. This was also the early days of breeding. The Love’s would get to see the best and hold them so their stock would have been exceptional. The hatchlings would be from known good stock, but we didn’t even know how to tell which ones would turn out real nice. It was never a sure thing, just as today. They are not always great even from great parents now. I think somebody like you can probably spot something in a hatchling to rate it as a good prospect, but back then it was a fairly uneducated guess. We forget too that back then a boa constrictor was an exotic snake that was more coveted in the pet trade. Brooks were something of a niche thing among collectors. I think we take it all a lot more seriously today than they did back then. The hypo was much later, but the rest, as they say, is history.

Okay the Love stock is from all over. But the hypos i bought back then and kept pure were from Doud beard stock (as i mentioned in my post "beard or mispelled "bard" line)and the Beard stock is locality for sure. Matter of fact I just talked to Doug Beard a month ago about where his hypos origintaed from. He wild collected the stock himself that popped out the hypos in extreme south Florida.

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ÌÏËÙÍ ËÁÂE!

"I have high friends in places."-H.Sherman in some bar

Yeah,....that's not too surprising since Beard live's way down there in Homestead,.....what a friggin "Snake-Haven" that area is,......and especially was decades ago!

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

From the fields collectors perspective, we could get twenty bucks for a yellow one, and nine bucks for a dark one, even if they were both found under the same tin on the banks of the Brooks canal. The dark one would end up on the dealers price list as Florida King on some (in an attempt to honestly represent), and Brooks (honestly represented but unhappy customer up north) on some others. The yellow one might never even make it to the list, as they would get picked by the connoisseurs constantly hanging out at the dealers. In the case of Love’s (Glades Herp) they had some field collectors that would bring stuff in from Brooks canal and they were confident of locality, and knew a good one when they saw it. They had great opportunity to select the best of the best ever found. It was inbreeding those very best that resulted in the hypo popping out of those yellow Brooks. Those were the best of the captive bred at the time. Doug’s field collected hypo came from out at the Miami Jetport in Collier County. It is what he bred it to to create the founding hypos that made those what they are. I believe he too knew a good Brooks when he saw it, and his breedings with the hypo were to keep it strictly Brooks. He could have crossed it into Florida types but didn’t. That’s why he was pissed at Tim Ricks creations being sold as Brooks. Doug probably had some Love Brooks stock. Everybody did. I’ve never been certain Doug didn’t just have the hypo pop out of some Love line Brooks anyway. This area is not that big really, they are probably all basically the same snake. I first saw the hypo Brooks on Vince Shiedts price list way back, I still have it somewhere. They were $600.00 but he didn’t really have any yet. I attended a small reptile show one mile from my house, and there spotted the first hypo I ever saw. My jaw dropped! I was quietly hoping the dude did not even know what he had, and asked what it was. It was Doug Beard. I bought two hets for $350.00 each. It was like that scene in Jurassic Park where the guy says “well, it looks like we’re out of a job”. I knew it was the end of field collecting of Brooks kings. Love the story of it all. Thanks for listening... I mean reading.
Here’s an old picture of a Doug Beard het for hypo. A nice looking Brooks.

Wow that is some cool info there. Thanks for that!
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ÌÏËÙÍ ËÁÂE!

"I have high friends in places."-H.Sherman in some bar

Doug Beard's hypo's when he just started producing them,...seems like early-mid 90's I saw him with them at a small show in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida(Lindsay Pike knows the show!..haha!). I was into some other species of stuff around that time,....I thought the hypo's were okay,.....but they really didn't "blow-my-skirt" like some other projects did,....especially when I think that they were $700 bucks I think at the time. And yeah, it seems ever since then, yellow brooksi seemed to be put on the "back burner", and morphs took "center stage".

It's funny though, how history tends to repeat itself......classic older muscle cars, clothing fashions, and a good ol' original classic yellow brooksi!..

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

A canal that doesn't exist anymore in South Dade County. The founders for the Love stock were collected by Carl May.

The bright yellows were indeed desirable, but not everyone was defining their "best brooksi" that way. Many people wanted the "least black pigment" or most faded-out pattern which was often a more cream-colored snake, not very yellow. The "tells" in cb babies were often the very high band count, light-colored iris, smallest amount of black ventral pigment, as well as the speckled saddles of course.
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Lindsay Pike
Urotopia Uromastyx

Yes,....faded looking was another nice distingushable difference that set the more desired ones apart! The lighter irises tends to make good sense too, as less melanin displayed at a young age would increase the odds of it being paler as an adult as well.

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

That's trued with alot of animals. Try to find a nice normal Colombian boa on the classifieds. 10 yearsago they were all over and noe everyone has a morph. I guess its good he have a choice, but the originals are always my favorites.
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Joe

good stuff. That's what got people in brooksi. the original vanishing pattern. all the way.

daveb

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in the light, you will find the road...

I'd love a brooksi like that - that's like what they use to sell at EBV in the 80s.

This is my brooksi, which is more of a brown -

With respect to the wild type description - this is from the 1st edition of Conant, when they were still considered a distinct subspecies:

Palest of the large Kingsnakes. Each individual dorsal scale is yellowish or cream-colored at base and brown at apex. Indications of light crosslines are sometimes present, especially in neck region. Belly is cream to pale yellow with spots of tan or pinkish brown.

From that description, the one I have definitely meets the description - while the ones that the pet trade favored in the 80s were the more yellowish phenotype.

Mine is het for PB from Nokturnal Tom and may have locality genetics (since the PBs that Rainer has are locale, and I *think* Tom got his from Rainer). Tom could answer that.

I want a yellow one like yours though
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I decided my old sig was too big.

Yeah most all the Peanut Butters came from me. I have been breeding them since they appeared . I bought most of the founding stock from the person who originated them.

But,,, that snake does not look like a het. It looks like more like an peanut butter. Some of the hets turn out so nice it gets confusing. Can you show a close up of the head so I can be sure?

Is that a female?

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ÌÏËÙÍ ËÁÂE!

"I have high friends in places."-H.Sherman in some bar

Without flash:

With flash:

As a neonate:

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I decided my old sig was too big.

And it's a male. At least it probed that way upon arrival and was listed by tom as male. I could check again.
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I decided my old sig was too big.

okay it is not a Peanut Butter. Just an exceptional het.

A peanut butter brooks will have a lavender color in place of the black pigment (like the black is on yours). In a Peanut Butter the black is actually lavender-amel color or purplish- translucent color, which appears blackish at first glance or from a distance. That is why i needed a close up of the head or body to know for sure.

But hey, that is a nice het peanut Butter. The hets from the peanut butters defineltt have a different look to them. ..Just like my NE axantrhic hets...I can pick the PB's and NE ax's out of a barrel of florida kings and tell you which is het for what.

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ÌÏËÙÍ ËÁÂE!

"I have high friends in places."-H.Sherman in some bar

Speaking of all things Brooks…
I found this picture online from a website to the Calusa Nature Center over in Ft. Meyers, Fla. The snake pictured sorta looks like a peanut butter to me. Do you know if the originals came from over that way? I have never seen any population that trends to that look, but I haven’t really looked everywhere over on that side. Thought you might find the picture interesting if you have not seen it. Here’s a link…

http://www.calusanature.com/Animal%20Facts/KingSnake.htm

That picture is not clear enough to determine anything/

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ÌÏËÙÍ ËÁÂE!

"I have high friends in places."-H.Sherman in some bar