Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey Gang!
I was glancing through my book, Pine Snakes a complete guide by W.P. Mara. On page 56 of this book, it shows an albino Northern Pine. In the caption for the photo it says she was found in the mid 1980's in the Barrens...huh? legality issue here? And it states it was still breeding as of publication of that book. Well I know diff people have albino Northerns, but do they all come from this female? Or if there are several albino Northern lines running, anyone keeping them pure to locality to the Pine Barrens? I'd like to know what you breeders know about the background to Albino Northern Pines.
Russell

The legallity of the albino you speak of was good.Even today with a permit you can collect new jersey acoording to Jack Hamstead of the fish and wildlife there. But that aside I know of at least three albino northerns that were collectted at different times. We currently have two of those lines in our collection.

John Cherry
Cherryville Farms

Greetings John, you have me curious in your response of 3 albino pines being collected from NJ. Were all 3 of these from the same locale as the one eyed female that was found in the barrens? I was only aware of 2 myself and at one time had only one pair from the female.

Would be interested in hearing what you have.

Best Regards, Rich Hebron

Rich,

the original female that you speak of was of course the founding animal for a lot of what folks have and are the most common. One other was collectted in the same area as she was several years later. Then in I believe 1987 a guy by the name of Mike Culp caught a hatchling about 15 miles away from the original capture sights. I was lucky enough to be talking to him when he got married and sold me 2.4 hets out of the male he collectted. They were hatchlings at the time, we raised them up and thankfully had 2.2 of that line out on breeder loan to a friend when we had our ordeal last year. I now have them back and are producing them again. i bred them into the barrens line as I call them several years ago and produced albino's from that breeding so the albino gene is on the same allele. They may be all related,but I doubt it and have kept the culp line separate from the others each year since then.

John Cherry
Cherryville Farms

PS I will post some pics of the two different lines as soon as I can get around to taking some pics. of them.

Thanks for the info. as I had never heard of the Culp line previously.

Best Regards, Rich Hebron

I will post a pic of the two side by side as they do look different. As soon as I get my lazy self up from this computer to take them.

john

this excerpt was taken from the write up on the pituophis page.

"Amelanistic, or "albino" Northern Pines exist in herpetoculture that are descendants of an albino specimen hatched from a wild-collected clutch of eggs. This lucky find occurred near the eastern edge of the Pine Barrens in Ocean County, NJ in the early to mid-1980's. Interestingly, a 48" adult albino female was taken from the same area in the late 1980's, and one or two more albinos were hatched by a NJ university conducting research on the effects of temperature on hatchling sex ratios. Since the latter albinos occurred or were taken into academic settings, it is unlikely that any large-scale breeding attempts were made with them. Virtually all of the albinos in captivity that are "pure" melanoleucus are descendants of the original Ocean Co. hatchling."

I know of at least three breeders (2) in Florida and (1) in SC that have crossed Amel southerns into their northerns and sold them as red albino northerns. If asked if they had southern blood they would reveal this information, but if the buyer didn't ask then they didn't offer it. Sounds like a Clinton policy huh?

dc

BTW, if I am not mistaken, the amels were grandfathered because they were hatched and collected prior to the protection law.

dc

albinos can be legally collected in the wild as they are not afforded the same protection as other species. This is why you can legally keep albino corns in NJ but not regular ones. You can legally keep normal pines in NJ, just can't collect them as you can albinos.
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Anthony Chodan

www.gradeareptiles.com