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Does anyone have any pics or information on spotted california king snakes. And I mean really genetically spoted (squarish spots down center of dorsal side), NOT a striped snake with lots of breaks in the stripe. Does anyone know of any bloodlines unrelated to renegade reptile stock?

Last year I hatched a number of them, and as far as I can tell, out of nowhere.

A little of my history. I started many of these Calking lines many years ago. I bred them for many generations. Then I moved on to other types of reptiles. So I have experience with what happens when breeding cal kings from different locals or gene lines.

But, after not breeding them for over a decade. Some of my sick friends gave me a bunch of different kingsnakes. Amoung them was an extremely black and white, offset banded(like eastern kings, more white then black male. Then one of those silly friends was given a Newporter type female, brown and lemon yellow, dashed on top, barred on the sides pattern with solid brown on top of tail, and blackbellied.

So I bred them, she produced two clutches, all eggs hatched. Normally you would expect a mixture and a blending of the parents patterns and colors. But thats not what happened. Both clutches contained some like the female, some like the male, and over half of these spotted types. There was no inbetweeners.

I kept 2.1 and gave some to Don Shores. I will post some pics later.

So is the above odd or is it only odd to me? So this year I bred the above male to a really nice reverse striper. Shes gravid now. Thanks FR

Well I don't know if I have a story that's too similar, but I do have a pair that I breed that has little or no black and definitely no white. One is a very dark brown "melanistic" male. Think of a banana with a very dark brown wash over him --kinda like a mendota king but I really don't think he is.. Anyway the female is a banana looking one also a bit dark but nothing like him. No white in either.
I get a mix, but none like him at all. At least 75% look similar to the female some with striping along their dorsum. Some have perfect stripes in yellow and brown/black.
BUT... some have that "extra stripe" and are black and white.
I just got 16 eggs from her last week and hope to produce some more like this one that I have posted many times.
All but a few are yellow and brown.
I no longer have this snake...
I'm an idiot.
I also had some spotted ones from different lines but never produced any myself. The dot-dash ones are what I get when I breed a normal banded to a stripe.
:Mark

**kinda like a mendota king but I really don't think he is.. Anyway the female is a banana looking one also a bit dark but nothing like him. No white in either.
I get a mix, but none like him at all.**

That's because the male is a melanistic, which is a simple recessive gene, so none of the babies would look like him unless the female was a het for melanism. But all the babies are 100% het for melanism.

Kerby...

.. I kinda knew that. Just stating that I never got any that loked like him. I didn't expect to, but then I didn't expect so many different looks from that pair either...
Kinda like Xmas when they hatch...some are definitely better than others for sure and some are just plain homely!
I don't know if I showed you before but here he is.
My apologies for hijacking the thread with no help for the spotted kings!
:Mark

That looks just like a Mendota, could be a Davis though. I have both and it looks like a Mendota.

Kerby...

Over half were like this and the parents did not look at all like this. Its not odd that a spotted occured, just so many of them without much variation. Thanks FR

But I sure wouldn't call it spotted.

Kerby...

Call it something, hahahahahaha the whole group was more spotted then anything else.

Again, I did not care if its normal or others have them, I am sure they do, but It was odd in my experience that so many came out of that pair, when all the others were either banded or newporters, like the parents.

What would you call them. Cheers FR

I would not call it"spotted". If the colors were reversed like a normal king and the pattern was the same, it wouldn't be a "spotted" either. Just an aberrant.

That's the fun with aberrancies, unpredictable.

Kerby...

reverse spotted? I understand they are not perfect reverse spotteds but neither are the spotteds below. If one was perfect, I would say, a perfect reverse spotted. I mean really I have a nearly perfect reverse striper. So why wouldn't these be reverse spotteds. hahahahahahahahahaha, please have some sense of humor as all this naming of of color types is a bit silly. But I do understand the need for a label.

So if you bred a reverse spotted with a normal spotted, would you get some all black ones and some all whites ones?????? FR

I've bred opposites before, actually a black with white stripe male to a brown with yellow stripe (Carlsbad wc) female and got one that looked like the male and one that looked like the female, the others were just aberrants, no two the same. That is the only time that I have bred 2 stripers (although not the same type) together and didn't end up with all stripers.

I have yet to see a white cal kings with black spots like the black ones with white spots.

Kerby...

These high white sorta spotteds, did not come from high white stock, or striped stock, nor were they variable. Thats the interesting part, they came from a banded and a newporter, and resulted in some exactly like the male, and some like the female, and a whold bunch of these. The answer is clear, their was a whity in the haystack, It was just odd that there was no variation with so many of them. hmmmmmmm FR

I never said yours came from High White stock.

Yours came from an aberrant parent (Newporter type).

What point are you trying to make?

Kerby...

I am just trying to figure out if my snakes are actually a genetically spotted mutation or if they are an aberant mutation that happens to have spots. The naming only maters if the trai breeds true. All of the high white animals that I have seen have a tendancy to have black markings in some random pattern that run along the spine. This trait has been selectively bred for in kingsnakes by breeding adults with the most white to produce even whiter offspring. Even if your parent animals did not look like the white offspring, they almost certainly come from a high white bloodline and are both heterozygous for the traits that you see in your snakes.

The spotted pictured below hatched from an F2 banded male (het for albino and het for stripe) and a striped female (het for nothing). The female is young (3 years old) and she only laid three eggs in her first clutch. One was infertile. When a striped baby hatched it was expected. When the next baby showed a near perfect spotted pattern it peaked my interest because I know the lineage of both parents and this trait is new to the bloodline. Renegade reptiles is the only other breeder that I can find who claims to have a proven spotted bloodline.

And no, a spotted bred to a reverse spotted wouldn't produce solid color babies. Genes don't work that way. But sinse the inheritance patterns of both traits have yet to be determined the proportions of babies would be impossible to predict.

Also just curious, have you ever seen a more perfectly spotted cal king?

**I am just trying to figure out if my snakes are actually a genetically spotted mutation or if they are an aberant mutation that happens to have spots.**

Is it genetic? - yes.
Is it predictable? - no, not in the same respect as recessive genes.
Is it genetic? - yes.
Is it an aberrancy - yes.

They have occurred in the wild naturally. The spotteds are also found where striped cal kings are found. The spotteds came from broken stripers. Both striped cal kings and spotted cal kings ARE NOT RECESSIVE GENES. Aberrancy is defined as not being "normal". "Normal" in cal kings usually refers to bandeds, but stripe also occurs "normally" in the wild. Aberrancies also occur in the wild, especially where bandeds and stripes are found. In California that may be the norm, but in Arizona we just have bandeds. So a striped cal king found in Arizona would be an aberrant by definition.

**The naming only maters if the trai breeds true.**

Not true. Naming describes a mutation or trait on how a cal king looks. Whether or not it "breeds true" is irrelevant. Especially for described names from aberrancies (ie - AZTEC)

**All of the high white animals that I have seen have a tendancy to have black markings in some random pattern that run along the spine.**

Totally not true. I have produced many High Whites that have very little black markings anywhere on the body.

**This trait has been selectively bred for in kingsnakes by breeding adults with the most white to produce even whiter offspring. Even if your parent animals did not look like the white offspring, they almost certainly come from a high white bloodline and are both heterozygous for the traits that you see in your snakes.**

This is not quite correctly stated. Although breeding selected High Whites will increase your chances of producing more of the same, it is still not 100% predictable. You can produce some awesome High Whites from some butt-ugly parents! And High White IS NOT A RECESSIVE GENE.

**The spotted pictured below hatched from an F2 banded male (het for albino and het for stripe) and a striped female (het for nothing).**

Again, you can produce spotted cal kings from just about any cal king that is aberrant. And stripe in cal kings IS NOT RECESSIVE.

**Renegade reptiles is the only other breeder that I can find who claims to have a proven spotted bloodline.**

Although I have bred that spotted line (Renegade stock) a few years ago, there are others that are not related. Newports, etc... Brian Hubbs has pictures of wild-caught spotteds that were taken years before they hit the herp trade.

Kerby...

The comment that I made about naming traits was clearly erroneous and not what I meant to say at all. Having consistant ways to name different color patterns is clearly important even if the trait is not genetically predictable. What I meant was that naming this trait was not the question I was asking. What I wanted to know was more about the inheritability of this trait.

As for the high whites issue. Originally when high whites were first coming onto the scene there were no perfect screamers that had no black at all, it was a slow selective proccess to get to the quality of high white animals that exist today. But the fact is that many (not the really good ones but most) high white cal kings still have traces of black on them. In the few bloodlines that I have worked with, I have noticed that the black is usually close to the spine especially at the neck and tail. (but you are right, I should have said most, not all) Sometimes I have seen animals that had black along the sides of the body (where the bely scutes meet the doral scales) and occasionally I got snakes that have the black randomly possitioned all over.

Clearly there is some variance within the trait. Breeding high white animals doesn't give you a litter of even whiter ones, but if you want really high whites you breed the whitest anmals around and hope to get a few that are even nicer.

The point I was trying to make, which I think you agree with, is that the snakes in the pictures above are nice normal high white animals but not spotted. Thats just how high white animals with black on them look.

As far as the gentics I have some questions. I have not been breeding cal kings for very long nor am I an expert on the inheritability of different patterns etc., but I am a genetics student and I have noticed a few things within my collection that make me question some of your statements.

***Both striped cal kings and spotted cal kings ARE NOT RECESSIVE GENES.***

For example I had two unrelated perfectly banded, black and white kings (unknown local) that both came from breeding 1 banded parent to 1 striped one. When bred together they prduced mostly bandeds, a few perfect stripes, and rarely an aberant looking one. Since both banded parents had one striped parent themselves, and then they throw a small percentage of striped offspring, In my mind that would make them het for stripe. Unfortunately I lost the records that I kept of this pair and I can't tell you what the exact proportions of the different patern types were.

Now maybe this trait isn't SIMPLE recessive, so you can't just work out a 4x4 punet square and predict all of your offspring. But the trait has to be recessive to some degree because both parents are banded yet they have striped babies sometimes. The genes have to be there somewhere, recessive just means that the parents don't have to show the phenotype.

Again I do not have extensive experiance with high white bloodlines but it would seem to me that if FR got those snakes above from parents that were not high white animals then there are only two explainations. Either the trait is somewhat recessive or FR has spontaneously found a new mutation that codes for high white animals.

So, now having never bred spotted animals before I have no idea what to expect from this trait. Do you think that if I bought a renegade spotted male to breed to the below female that they would throw some spotted offspring, or do you think that the babies would have random paterns all over the place??

I didn't mean to step on any toes with the last post, admittedly it was quickly and carelessly written. Sorry.

Kerby...

I meant the reverse of what your snakes look like. (although those are some sweet high whites, I would agree that they are not genetically spotted) I meant an all black king with white squarish spots down the spine.

Does anyone know how to shrink a picture. I have lots of pics of my snakes but they are too big to post!

IrfanView is a free application that will allow you to view and convert a large number of file formats.

Download it and hit the help file. You want to target a size of around 800 pixels wide or less. It should have some type of "optimize for web" option.
IrfanView

Or you can send it in email... Right click on your pics and send to email recipient......there is an option to resize your pics. I drag the resized pics to my desktop and upload them to the Photo Gallery and post them........
John Lassiter

This is the mutation that I am looking for more information about.

another pic. notice how the spots are clearly not just a broken stripe as many of them run horizontally.