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I saw a baby corn tonight that I thought was an anerythristic - it was grayish with black saddles. The weird thing was that the gray areas were turning orange. Did I misidentify it, or is this a stage that anerythristics go through? Sorry if this is a dumb question, I just have trouble identifying the morphs when they're hatchlings.

A lot of a corn snake's color develops with age. Some normal corns can begin life looking very dark with very little red. This could just be a normal that is just starting to color up. There also are morphs called ruby freckled or something to that affect that are normal anerytheristics that develop scattered patches of red with age. I doubt this is what you saw however because they are quite rare and the color doesn't usually develop until much later in life. Just my two cents.

Brian

Was this a wild snake or pet store snake? And what state are you in if it was wild.
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Tom
TCJ Herps
"The more people I meet, the more I like my snakes"

It was in a pet store along with some other hatchlings.

(Just out of curiosity, what would it mean if it were in the wild?)

If you take that baby and hold it closer to a bright light, you'll see that its saddles are really very dark red/brown, rather than black. Also, the color you're seeing between the saddles on the back is just the beginnings of the ground color coming in for the animal.

All normals go through a phase of color changes over the first several months to a year or so, but some are more drastic in their changes than others. Some normals can be confused with anerythristics, but this one sounds like it has to be a normal for certain.
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Darin Chappell
Hillbilly Herps
PO Box 254
Rogersville, MO 65742

Thanks for the help, everyone. I appreciate the replies. This has happened to me before, and for whatever reason, I just can't seem to tell what colors hatchlings are going to turn.

The reason I asked if it was wild caught was because I thought maybe you were seeing a baby rat snake for whatever kind of rat snake you have in your area. Corns are rats though, so thats all along the same lines anyway.
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Tom
TCJ Herps
"The more people I meet, the more I like my snakes"

That's a good thought, but unfortunately the only rat snakes in my area are black rats and possibly corns (I'm at the northern extreme of their range). I've only recently gotten into herps, but I'm starting to get jealous - they have so much more diversity down south.

This post has already been buried on this page so I may just be talking to myself. But here goes anyway. Most normal corns that I have had experience with dont show very much yellow in the early stages of growth. For some reason it usually takes about a year give or take before it really starts to come in. Therefore when the yellow starts to do its thing it can really change the look of a normal corn a lot.
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1,0 snow
1,0 amel
1,0 texas corn
1,0 aney stripe motley
0,1 normal
0,1 charcoal
0,1 motley
1,1 oketee
0,1 tx rat
1,0 diadem
4,5 ball python
1,1 dumerils boa
1,1 columbian red tail boa
1,1 green iguana
1,0 leopard gecko
1,2 dogs
freezer full of mice & rats