Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Checking out the camera.

Bill

That is 100% not a Pueblan. Pueblan Milks, Lampropeltis triangulum campbelli, are quite different in appearance than your snake. You animal appears to be a Sinaloan/Nelson's Milk. Whoever sold you that specimen had it mislabeled.

-Cole

A L. t. campbelli:

Well that shows how much I know. Thank you for the correction.

Bill

It's still an attractive snake. I don't see any campbelli influence in it, but that's just me. It looks like a hobby nelsoni to me.
-Cole

that's not a pueblan, for sure.

it looks more like a nelsons. so i guess it could be from one of the many pueblan x nelsons pairings.

Is that a fairly common cross?

Bill

they've become somewhat common recently.

a few years back, some people got the bright idea to make albino apricot pueblans (campbelli). since campbelli hasn't yet had the amel gene genuinely pop up in known populaces, they decided to 'borrow' the gene from another, closely related, west mexican milksnake - the nelsons milksnake (nelsoni).

the problem with this is, since the lacey act prohibits any new imports from mexico, what is currently in the hobby is probably all we're ever going to legally see.

this has also happened, to varying extents, with sinaloan/nelsons as well as central american milks (hondurensis, polyzona, abnorma, etc.).

now most of what i've seen look very much like a mix of either parent species, but sometimes the offspring look nearly identical to one or the other nominate species and this is where things get messy. people mislabeling (sometimes by mistake, sometimes on purpose) and those who purchased the mislabeled, in turn, end up breeding them and selling the offspring as something they are not.

now, no one is saying they're not a perfectly good pet snake. in fact, i have a pueblan/nelsons rescue that i adore. she was nearly dead when i received her, she hadn't eaten in several months due to intestinal impaction - after she finally passed this black putrid blockage (due mainly to dosing with flagyll) she became one of my best eaters. i know she'll always finish what the others won't. and while she looks, mostly, like a pueblan she inherited the nelsons calmer disposition.

Still a nice looking snake!
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Kent

1.1 Hypo (het lavender, striped) corn snakes, 2010
1.2 Gray-banded king snakes, blairs phase, 2008
0.0.10 Gray-banded king snakes, 2011
1.1 Oregon rubber boas, w/c 2000 and something

Colossians 3:17

Thanks. We like him/her. Eats like a savage but otherwise just cool and inquisitive.

Bill