Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Anyone got the history on these guys?
Are all Sulfur Lavenders only part Sulfur?
I do not recall a Lavender hatching from the Sulfur line.
So a "pure" Sulfur Lavender seems out of the question.
Or are they like Flames some are awesome some are not but they come from the Flame line? If so whats with the 50% Sulfur?
Any info or thoughts would be appreciated.

There where only two sulfurs that were the originals. One was from Len and Ken Krysco and I think they called them school bus yellow kings.

Recently another poster found some sulfury looking ones. Maybe he will chime in on the history and locale data.

Since this is not a reccessive trait most all sulfurs 9normals or lavender0 are outcrossed 50-25% sulfur. But backcrossing and breeding siblings does produce some that look pretty darn nice looking snakes.

>>There where only two sulfurs that were the originals. One was from Len and Ken Krysco and I think they called them school bus yellow kings.
>>
>>Recently another poster found some sulfury looking ones. Maybe he will chime in on the history and locale data.
>>
>>Since this is not a reccessive trait most all sulfurs 9normals or lavender0 are outcrossed 50-25% sulfur. But backcrossing and breeding siblings does produce some that look pretty darn nice looking snakes.
>>
>>

The original "school bus" king came from Andy Barr and Mike Falcon.....as per Mike.
-----
www.brandonosbornereptiles.com

The original "school bus" king came from Andy Barr and Mike Falcon.....as per Mike.

I think that is correct. I remember talking to Mike Falcon and Anyy Barr back when the expo was still in Orlando (circa 1992) and Mike said they originated the first one. I think ( I think)they said they had a pair or the w/c was a female and the all babies were lost in a laundry room accident...or at least something to that effect....

>>The original "school bus" king came from Andy Barr and Mike Falcon.....as per Mike.
>>
>>I think that is correct. I remember talking to Mike Falcon and Anyy Barr back when the expo was still in Orlando (circa 1992) and Mike said they originated the first one. I think ( I think)they said they had a pair or the w/c was a female and the all babies were lost in a laundry room accident...or at least something to that effect....

When I talked to Mike a few years ago, he told me the original was a HUGE male close to 6'. He and Andy had used it with several females. From what I remember him telling me, this would have been around 15-16 years ago, as you say 92ish. Mike and Andy both had invested interested in this line, held back lots of offspring, then sold the male to Len. Eventually Mike sold his animals from the line, I'm guessing to work with more hondurans......and Andy has vanished from the face of the earth. lol.

As you said, any time you talked to Andy you would end up confused by his stories. He did tell me back in 2000 or 2001 that he bred goini into the "dream kings" but did keep some "pure". This is where his "fruition" line came to.....fruition. Although later on, he tried saying the fruition kings did not have goini blood in them. Who knows?

All I know is, the sulfur line is worthy of keeping alive. It's good to know there are a few others out there.
-----
www.brandonosbornereptiles.com

Yeah but I also disticntly remember where Mike and Andy (they both worked the same table together back then)said something about them losing some sulfurs in a laundry room accident. Don't remember exactly but what they lost ended the pure sulfur line in some way.

Kevin Enge hatched an albino (Lavender type, I think) from a Tampa kingsnake pair that was found in the spot as sulfurs. I don't know if the "normal" parents had sulfur traits or not (probably). So the first lavender FL kings may have been sulfur lavenders. Lavenders have actually come in to FL kings from a few different sources, including Cal kings.

Sulfurs were collected in and near Tampa in coastal Hillsborough County, FL. Certain locales produced a lot of sulfur kings. It's not like there were only 1 or 2 collected. I've spoken with people that collected a lot of them during the 80s, and they were common at the time.

Len Krysko sold kings from this area as Sulfur kings and School Bus kings. I'm not sure if there was a distinction. As far as I knew he was the first to use the name "Sulfur"

Andy Barr had a line he called "Dream Kings". These were supposed to be pure Floridana but its often been speculated that they were crossed into cal kings, goini, etc...

Andy Barr bred everything into anything lol. But he did have su pure sulfur kings and he used the sulfurs to cross into other things. At that time anyone talking to him got confused. he was ahead of his time and just because he bred hybrids people speculated anything he had must have been crossed and hybridized. That is unfortunate because today people have hybrids and keep pure species as well and people can tell the difference because now we know what to look for. I guess the fact that most of the big breeders all bred hybrid animals back then butthey don't have this bad reputation..?

I think there were still plenty of breeders that didn't hybridize or kept them separate and represented the animals accurately and honestly (it takes both).
I was a vendor at one of the early Tampa shows right next to this Vendor A, or let's call him Vendor AB. I heard his descriptions and explanations for several days and they changed rapidly and frequently based on what and how the questions were asked. For example, he repeatedly said his amel goini were completely pure. The next day I asked if the origin was a captured snake or they just popped up in a breeding. He said the amel was from cal kings and since it was several generations ago it was now "pure". I know that word can initiate debate as to it's definition but that wasn't how I would ever define it. No, I really couldn't take the accuracy of his lineages very seriously after that day. But I gotta admit some looked pretty. They just weren't what I wanted.
I'm not trying to open the old can o worms, I'm just trying to give a little insight as to why I personally viewed some hybridizing breeders differently and was forever more cautious and skeptical.

Posted by: LP at Wed Feb 25 08:00:52 2009 [ Report Abuse ] [ Email Message ]

I think there were still plenty of breeders that didn't hybridize or kept them separate and represented the animals accurately and honestly (it takes both).
I was a vendor at one of the early Tampa shows right next to this Vendor A, or let's call him Vendor AB. I heard his descriptions and explanations for several days and they changed rapidly and frequently based on what and how the questions were asked. For example, he repeatedly said his amel goini were completely pure. The next day I asked if the origin was a captured snake or they just popped up in a breeding. He said the amel was from cal kings and since it was several generations ago it was now "pure". I know that word can initiate debate as to it's definition but that wasn't how I would ever define it. No, I really couldn't take the accuracy of his lineages very seriously after that day. But I gotta admit some looked pretty. They just weren't what I wanted.
I'm not trying to open the old can o worms, I'm just trying to give a little insight as to why I personally viewed some hybridizing breeders differently and was forever more cautious and skeptical.

Yeah i remeber those years at the Tampa show. I was there. For the most part what you said about vendor AB is true. But those were the last years he was in business that he mixed his stories up. He got into trouble (drugs) and previously he did represnt his animals honestly. I guess it takes a few years to get to know someone and for the most part this vendor/breeder was honest up up until his last two years in business. Drugs will do that to you. So during the time before that he did have pure sulfurs and he did breed them into lavenders ect. His goini, to me at least, were obvious crosses.

However the question you asked him if the goini were pure and he said they are because of several generations is true . Once an animal is bred back a certain amount of times all DNA becomes that animal. In farming this is especially true. Also most species ARE evolving as we speak. natural crosses and even hybridization takes place in the wild and are absorbed into one other the other parent animal. What we have as "pure" really originated from something else. Things are constanly changing in nature.

Now there are some peopoe who have a hard time wrapping their heads around all this and that is what causes the debates.

AB was ahead of his time he just didn't have the character to marketing skills to advance what he was doing. What he did in breeding was fantastic. What he did to represent them was havoc. But his animals and things he accomplished was great. Unless you knew him for a certain amount of time and talked with him over the phone (something i think a person should do anyway if they are so interested in history of animals)he had his hands into a LOT of projects.

The one that Mike found also had a bobbed tail if I remember correctly. I think that one was a male?
If you look at some others from the same general area you can see that there is a good amount of color in the neck/chin area even in otherwise drab looking adults.
:Mark
-----
Surrender Dorothy!

crimsonking.piczo.com/

The "implication" of a percentage on a sulphur line animal is incorrect... as far as I know Sulphur is a Color Phenotype... so either the animal looks the part of or does not. Sulphur x Anything is an Outcrossed. Like most floridana there will always be a spectrum of color when you breed a desired trait into unrelated stock. Percentages (%) do not belong here.

I'm unsure about the other Sulphurs out there but last season I bred Brandon Osborne's Sulphur 100% het Lavender to two females... a Lavender and a Hypo... NONE of the babies were close to as nice/intense as the sulphur (sire)...

In the Sulphur x Hypo clutch... they were pretty yellow... nice yellow.. but not SULPHUR YELLOW

Sulphur X Hypo Male 1

Sulphur x Hypo Male 2

In the Sulphur x Lav clutch ... the babies were very dull... looked like regular floridana... but now the one "normal" het and the two lavenders are picking up color... still no where near as INTENSE as Sulphur x Sulphur babies Brandon had a few years ago... but WELL above your average lavender.

Sulphur X Lavender Male

Sulphur x Lavender Female 1 (spotted):

Sulphur x Lavender Female 2:

I think there's more to Brandon's Sulphur. He is intensely yellow (looks hypo actually), Yellow near patternless belly pattern and has white scale all over... actually if you look at the white scales they run straight now his back

Sulphur (sire)

Lavender Female:

Hypo Female:

Now with Tom Agosta's Flames ... he calls these (below) "Extreme Flames" ... now it could be a line bred thing or a recessive.... time will tell. After seeing the hypos from this line and noting that there is ZERO black on them... it wouldn't surprise me if there was more to these than just "line bred"

~ZF

....so is saying that the Sulpher Phenotype is a Polygenetic trait correct?
-----
1.0.0 Lampropeltis getula holbrooki
0.1.0 Lampropeltis getula californae
0.0.1 Lampropeltis getula nigra
1.0.0 Lampropeltis mexicana thayeri
2.3.0 Eublapharis macularius macularius
0.0.2 Rhacodactylus ciliatus
0.1.0 Gerrhosaurus major major

No I'm not saying that at all.

To be honest i THINK Brandon's (I can't speak for the other Sulphur out there) Sulphur may be a Recessive maybe some sort of HYPER (increased color) mutation. Being that i bred the male to two female and got pretty much the same result Normal (yet above average) babies. i have a feeling there's more to the male pictured previously than just a very colorful normal. ... but only back breeding to the sire and sibling x sibling pairings will answer my questions.

~ZF

Okay I get it now.

So you think the male(in that line anyways) has another anomaly in its genotype? Is there any chance it could be Incomplete Dominance that produced the "better than normal" offspring, and what everyone is referring to as Sulfur is actually a Super Form?

Sorry, this might be a really stupid question(and probably is, but I don't know crap about kingsnake morphs).
-----
1.0.0 Lampropeltis getula holbrooki
0.1.0 Lampropeltis getula californae
0.0.1 Lampropeltis getula nigra
1.0.0 Lampropeltis mexicana thayeri
2.3.0 Eublapharis macularius macularius
0.0.2 Rhacodactylus ciliatus
0.1.0 Gerrhosaurus major major

In the case of "incomplete dominance"

two very different (in appearance) morphs will combine to make a 3rd morph that shares characteristics of the two parent morphs but is distinctly different from both parent morphs.

***This will all occur without double hets being produced and then breeding 2x het to 2x het.

There aren't any "Supers" with incomplete dominant traits...

For incomplete dominance to occur parent mutations 1 and 2 would have to be "Co-allelic" ... so it's not like you can just breed these snakes into any morph and get the same result (i hope I'm not confusing you).

If the sulphur were dominant then i'd get Sulphurs no matter what i bred him to.

If it's just a line bred thing then i'll get "sulphur-ish" babies when i breed sibling to sibling

If it's a recessive then i'll have to "pull" the ones i think are expressing the trait and breed them to each other and to the sire to see what i get... if they prove out breeding them together and back to the sire should give me 100% Sulphurs

long process but i have fun doing this.

~ZF

Oh Sorry! What I originally meant to ask was there a possibility that Sulfur was CoDom.........don't know why I put Incomplete Dominance.

It sounded to me like it(CoDom) at first with a Sulfur parent producing a "not-so-normal" offspring, but yet not a Sulfur(which would be the Super form).
-----
1.0.0 Lampropeltis getula holbrooki
0.1.0 Lampropeltis getula californae
0.0.1 Lampropeltis getula nigra
1.0.0 Lampropeltis mexicana thayeri
2.3.0 Eublapharis macularius macularius
0.0.2 Rhacodactylus ciliatus
0.1.0 Gerrhosaurus major major

"i have a feeling there's more to the male pictured previously than just a very colorful normal. ... but only back breeding to the sire and sibling x sibling pairings will answer my questions."

Bravo ZF!
I believe we should take this approach more often. Keep good records, see how the hatchlings change as they grow. Comfirming the theorized genetics really does take several generations sometimes, and combining with other morphs can obscure the results. Too often speculations are made too quickly and accepted as facts or the breeding of the offspring isn't tracked completely.

Lindsay

Before i started breeding my snakes there were these "selectively bred" snakes that just looked soooo spectacular! WELL above average! it is a practice i really like and plan on continuing (and taking lots of pictures/notes along the way)

You are correct some Theories turn into "Facts" way too quickly then end up confusing people because the "homework" wasn't done... I don't plan on making those mistakes

Thanx for the motivation... sometimes it's good to get a pat on the back.

~Z

Care to share your thoughts on the flame "gene"?

To be really honest i can't exactly wrap my head around these yet.

when i think about these (Extreme Flames) i think "RED Sulphur" ... it would be interesting to see what Flame X Sulphur would look like ...

By like the Sulphur... i think there is more to these "Extreme Flames" that just line bred... i mean look at the other flames that pop out in the same clutch they are pretty much high orange but these "Extreme Flames" are RED

my theory is pretty much Sulphur and Flame may have a similar/same "thing" going on... (HYPER-Morph) one's yellow the other is red

but again... more breeding needs to be done.

Love that snake btw: i hope to score one this season.

~Z

You can't tell on those hatchlings/juveniles how yellow they're going to get as adults. Sulfurs still generally start out bland looking and get most of their color while they age. Wait till those grow up and you may be surprised. Some show stronger yellow at hatching, but I don't know how those grow up.

Still, sulfur is really a combination of a few different traits. At the barest they have a strong yellow, and a light coloration. From the original lines, many had a low band count, wide bands and aberrant patterns. Brandon's male has most of those traits. His looks exceptional, the best I've seen in a while... yet is het for lavender so it has been outcrossed from the original lines.

The best I've seen were at Len Krysko's place back in 2003. The sulfurs just smoked compared all other Floridana when it came to the intensity of their yellow and orange colors. They all had a certain look to them... the combination of their various phenotypic traits is what made them so unique.

You are right... they are still young and i'm sure they'll pick up a fair amount of color as adults.

but i still don't think they'll look anything like the sire. i do think some the F2's (F2 to denote the 2nd generation... not implying anything WC) will look as good or better than the sire.

I think it follows the same logic as creating hybrids. The F1 generation usually produces offspring that all sort of look like the same 50/50 mix of their parents, where-as the F2 generation will produce a more wildly variable group.