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Fantastic photos of red bull vs yellow bull inspired me once again to try to get a clear answer on id...diff between sonoran gopher and texas bull? I have a 6 1/2 ft adult female that I call a bull one year and a gopher the next depending on the pics I see. The yellow bull posted below looks exactly like mine except she's got a little more patterning on the head. I have a young yellow male and I'd like to breed but don't really want bull/gopher mix. Any help would be appreciated. ds

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Sometimes it can be difficult to tell the two apart, especially in the western part of TX where the two readily intergrade. But normally the bull has more speckling on the head than the gopher. A better way to tell is if you look at the rostral scale. On the bull it will be skinny, longer than wide. On the sonoran gopher the rostral scale will be short and fat. Here is a pic of my gopher. Take a look at the rostral scale, see how short and fat it is? Now a bulls will be long and skinny in comparison. If you can, get a good clear close up shot of the snake in questions head and Im sure some one on here can id it.

Hope this helps.
Brian

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RATS
1.0 Corn snake "Warpath" (KY locale)
0.0.1 Corn snake (KY locale)
1.0 Black rat snake "Havok" (KY locale)
1.1 Black rat snakes "Reaper and Mystique" (MO locale)
1.0 Albino Black rat snake "Malakai" (Dwight Good stock)
1.0 Everglades rat snake "Deadpool" (Dwight Good stock)
0.1 Greenish rat snake "Rogue" (Dwight Good stock)
0.0.1 Great plains rat snake (TX locale)
1.0 Grey rat snake "Punisher" (White oak phase)(Dwight Good stock)

Good luck and Happy Herping
Brian

One of the list members of the pituophis yahoo group posted a photo illustrating the difference perfectly. Unfortunately, I can't provide the URL of the photo because yahoogroups won't let non-members view group photos >

Anyway, the easiest way to tell is to look at the rostral scale from the side. When you view the snake's head from the side, a bullsnake's rostral scale will stick out prominently. A gopher snake's rostral scale, in contrast, will lie flat. In other words, if you're looking at a gopher snake's head from the side, you won't really see his rostral scale.

Hope that makes sense. The pictures do a lot better job of describing the difference!

for your responses. The reason I thought I'd try to get a clear id on her again is that she's looks almost identical to the yellow bull Jason Nelson posted pics of a few inches below (yellow bull/red bull) The only diff is she's got a few more black spots on her head and slightly bolder blotches on her anterior.

I hadn't heard about the rostral scale id before, so I will check her out more closely tonite....have a 3 ft yearling het bull to compare her to....he's showing wonderful hi-yellow at this point...traded him for a black pine and wasn't all that jazzed about his color when I got him.

Just one more note on the yearling...he's been a great feeder since he was a tyke and has tamed down totally. I ran out of rat fuzzies about 6 weeks ago, though but managed to score a bag of really fresh froz mice from a local breeder. DagBlastit...he just would not touch them! After a month, I was getting a tad concerned...he wasn't acting too happy either but I scored some medium rats yesterday and he chowed without hesitation. Hard to figure how an animal could get so picky about thawed rodents!!!!!

Will post some cool pics soon of them, plus my trio of adult Black Pines...thanks again.