Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was just wondering.
After looking at the hypo Brooksi pics posted by Nokturnel Tom and JETZEN below(which are very beautiful snakes by the way).
What is the difference between hypos and what was considered an excellent example of a normal brooksi king 10 or 15 years ago?
Aren't hypos what a great brooksi is supposed to look like?
Could someone post a normal colored brooksi?

Thanks
Kevin

At the risk of upsetting some people, I agree with you.
When I was growing up, floridana was floridana, they were yellow and brown.There was a large part of the state where they woud intergade with getula getula. These intergrades became widely accepted as Florida Kings, and anything showing yellowish tones were called Brooks Kings. Here's a pic of what was sold to me as a Brooks King, The original brooksi had no visible cross bands. Mine are very visible as you can see. I'm not harping on anyone's snake here, just voicing my observations of 33 years living in Pinellas County.

This is a great looking snake.
Back in the day I would have called this a nice Florida King. They're both(floridas and brooks) are equally nice looking snakes. Brooks was always just a locality thing anyway. South of Homestead along a certain canal or thing like that.
I may have been disappointed if this was sold to me as a brooks but considering how good it looks I wouldn't be too disappointed.
Thanks for you answer.
Kevin

~ZF

Thanks for the compliment! You are so right my friend. I have been told by guys who have breeding snakes for years that the coming of the Hypo Brooks was kind of a bummer because it meant now anyone can have a killer yellow/gold Brooks in thier collection. The difference between Hypo and a killer normal ADULT is sometimes not so easy to discern. The babies however are way different with Hypos being maroon and red which gradually turn golden. Baby normals have a dark ground color like brown or black and also turn yellow with age. The whole debate over there being a difference between Brooksi and Floridana is archived dozens of times on this forum,....many points are made and the bottom line is 15 years after the official sub species was taken away....we still refer to the nice ones as Brooksi. Some Floridana are drab....they're dark without much contrast and just are not too flashy. However a nice normal Brooksi is something that stands out immediately, they're bright colorful snakes and many many people fall in love with them and end up owning bunches of them. Bill Love said you can expect what seems like an eternity of mosquito bitten soggy days in the field before you find a killer normal Brooksi in the wild. The hardest thing about picking Brooksi now is the fact that babies look nice, but they don't color up until they have aged a bit. Sometimes nice babies turn out to be average, sometimes not so nice babies end up being knockouts as adults. Most of the normal Brooksi you see these days are actually hets for this n that. Take a glance at pics on the classifieds and you may be able to see some variation in the degree of color. There's nice looking normal Floridana, but most feel a Brooksi is still prettier than the nicest Floridana. I will post 2 comparison pics for you Tom Stevens

Brooksi

Floridana

Thanks Tom,
I used to breed brooksi a long time ago. I got my original animals from Bill Love before he started Glades. Lately I have been thinking of getting some again(see post below). So I know what you mean about the normal babies. It just seemed to me that the color of the hypos was what everyone at the time wanted their babies to turn into, and they would be call normals.
I have to admit though when I compare your yearling brooks to your hypo the yearling looks to have a more normal coloration. If that makes sense.
Kevin

I was one of those people who was into high tellow brooksi 15 years ago. It seemed to me one time while I was perousing the tables at the Orlando Expo that I was the only one is search of the perfect brooksi neonate that WOULD turn into a speckled high yellow adult. There r4eally wasn;'t much competion and almost zero interest. I did learn how to select for yellow speckled brooksi and at the time raised up some of the yellowest brooksi I can recall to date. I remember one particular breeders stock. His name was Tim Abbott. He has since gotten out of breeding brooksi and more into lucrative snakes. Anyway, I selected from his stock by picking the ones that had the most speckling inbetween the bands. Abbotts stock lightened up with the bands and blended where you could not tell the bands from the rest of the snake, IF YOU PICKED THE RIGHT ONE FROM SEVRAL CLUTCHES, created a very speckled yellow "brooksi".

I sold one nice male to Tim Ricks about 10 years ago. He said it was one of the best normals he had seen. I don't know what he did with that snake or if he even still has it, but my point is you can select for a nice brooksi at a show like the Daytona Expo if you take a whole day just staring and staring at normal brooksi and going back and forth comparing which subtle differences would make the better yellower screamer. Note: this can really drive some of the sellers batty
lol!

sounds like you're talking about Lee Abbott of Sarasota. He always seems to have top-notch examples of whatever species he's working with - kings,hogs,corns and his alterna are unbelivable.
Back then I was also trying to predict which hatchlings would turn into the best brooksi. We would count bands (higher the better) look for light ventrals, ask to see the parents, even compare iris color. Lots of interband speckling was expected from the day of hatching and hopefully increased as the snake aged. Sometimes it worked out that way and sometimes it didn't. Now I regret letting go many of my best normals when the hypos came along.
Lindsay Pike

sounds like you're talking about Lee Abbott of Sarasota. He always seems to have top-notch examples of whatever species he's working with - kings,hogs,corns and his alterna are unbelivable.
Back then I was also trying to predict which hatchlings would turn into the best brooksi. We would count bands (higher the better) look for light ventrals, ask to see the parents, even compare iris color. Lots of interband speckling was expected from the day of hatching and hopefully increased as the snake aged. Sometimes it worked out that way and sometimes it didn't. Now I regret letting go many of my best normals when the hypos came along.
Lindsay Pike

Sounds like you where right there looking at them with me.lol!

I did the same thing by letting the normals go when the first hypos came along. AT that time I spent $750 each for the hypos. One from Doug Beard and one from the Loves.

1)Lots of interband speckling on hatchlings
2)compare iris color
3)look for light ventrals
4)count bands (higher the better)
5)ask to see the parents
6)compare iris color

Ahh.. those were the days

I was in south FL for 6 weeks in January of 04. I went to pet shops looking for Brooksi, and of course people thought I was nuts seeing wherever you are, snakes from that particular region are not of much interest to most of the locals. After finding out I was from Texas they really wanted to talk about Alterna, TX Rat morphs and things like that. Anyhow, I was looking for WHITE Floridana, hoping to find soemthing similar to Brandons. I figured since the snakes were of little interest to these people they'd not realize the potential of a nice whitish Brooksi. I told a few shops and dealers I would possibly take as many as a dozen if the snakes were anything close to what I was looking for. I came home with two. Not white at all, and one has yet to speckle out and looks like a regular ol Floridana. I am guilty of chasing the almighty dollar and taking an interest in trendy animals and what not but this reminds me of talks I have had with friends....with the subject being finding wild type snakes like Corns Kings and Milks that are NOT het for anything.....meaning those will be the high dollar animals of the future and the morphs will be so common they will be worthless. To think some people strive to preserve locale, yet we can barely find wild types that are not actually hets. Kinda makes me wonder....where are all the normals of yesteryear? I also wonder if locale is SO important to some people why is it they can barely give them away at cheap prices? I am too the point where if I did find a killer pair of wild type Brooksi that were het for nothing I would pay an above average price for them. I would breed them to each other and keep a few back each year but I would definitely make hets too. I have 1 KILLER female, however I suspect she is het Hypo. If she proves to not be a het I will have half my pair for "project normal". Who woulda guessed normals would be so hard to come by? Not me... Tom Stevens